![]() ![]() ![]() At the beginning is a flood: “The ducks swam through the drawing-room windows.” The windows belong to Grandmother Willoweed, formidable matriarch of both her family and her Warwickshire village, more or less of the landed gentry but not always ladylike (“What do you think I pay you for, you insubordinate slut?” she rebukes one of her maids). Like the poem, the novel concerns itself with recounting the past: “Summer about seventy years ago” is the setting. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1954) takes its striking title from Longfellow’s ‘The Fire of Drift-Wood’: Like theirs, Comyns’ novel is a curious work which does not explain itself, and teases the reader between comedy and darkness. This piecemeal availability (rather like Patrick Hamilton’s) will have to do, though Comyns deserves better: the book reminds me of other English originals such as Muriel Spark or Penelope Fitzgerald. ![]() Comyns has another title reissued through NYRB Classics, and another available from Virago in the UK where she lived and worked. It is beautifully published by them, in a squarish format and waxy cover. A chance encounter with Dorothy, a publishing project (probably via the ever-distracting Twitter) led me to this book. ![]()
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May 2023
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