Comyns, Barbara – The Bell Bookshop

A Touch of Mistletoe

Emma — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sisters Victoria and Blanche grow up in their grandfather's house in Warwickshire. It's a secluded existence: their mother is a war widow with a thirst for port and sherry and their last governess leaves never to be replaced. When their grandfather dies, their mother replaces drink with housework and the girls plan their escape. Blanche heads off to train as a model at a dubious institution in London. Vicky wants to study art but answers an ad leading her to Holland, where she tends a pack of miserable bull terriers. This is just the beginning of the sisters' adventures which take them from the poverty of cooking eggs over a candle in their Mornington Crescent bedsit, to a wider bohemian world, as they encounter love and the fluctuating fortunes that come when you're open to the strange twists life can take.

The House of Dolls

Emma — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Evelyn and Berti are divorcees, addicted to tight trousers and drink, surviving on small annuities and they do not get on well together. Though well past their prime, there is an air of breeding about them but something distinctly odd too. They live in a boarding-house in Kensington dreaming of the past, real and imagined, and better days. They are not exactly tarts, but they have established a bordello for elderly gentle people in their living-room and a little makeshift prostitution helps to pay the rent. The business has its problems: their landlady is a reluctant madam, Ivy is in love with a dentist from Putney, one of their gentlemen suddenly dies. What will become of Evelyn and Berti?

Our Spoons Came From Woolworths

Emma — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

‘Comyns’s world is weird and wonderful . . . a neglected genius’ LUCY SCHOLES, OBSERVER

‘A curious hybrid: a mixture of domestic disaster, social commentary, comedy, and romance . . . ‘ KATHERINE A. POWERS, BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW

‘I defy anyone to read the opening pages and not to be drawn in, as I was . . . Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else’ MAGGIE O’FARRELL

Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist’s model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s where poverty, babies (however much loved) and husband conspire to torment her.

Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic and comes to regret her marriage and her affair. But in this case virtue is more than its own reward, for repentance brings an abrupt end to the cycle of unsold pictures, unpaid bills and unwashed dishes . . .

Sisters By A River

Emma — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On the banks of the River Avon, five sisters are born. The seasons come and go, the girls take their lessons under the ash tree, and always there is the sound of water swirling through the weir. Then, unexpectedly, an air of decay descends upon the house: ivy grows unchecked over the windows, angry shouts split the summer air, the milk sours in the larder and their father takes out his gun. Tragedy strikes the family, and before long the furniture is being auctioned off and the sisters dispersed among relatives. In her daring first novel, originally published in 1947, Barbara Comyns’ unique young heroine relates the vivid, funny and bittersweet story of a childhood.