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4.0
Late last year I read THE VET’S DAUGHTER by Barbara Comyns. It had been sat on my shelf for some time and I’m not sure what made me pick it up that day but I’m glad I did. Comyns has a very distinctive voice, and it is one that I instantly felt at home with. Her writing is suffused with a peculiarly British kind of grubbiness. You can imagine that her writing room was strewn with splattered ink and tea-stain rings. These works are tinged with the Gothic but portrayed in a matter-of-fact way that treats the eccentric characters and happenings as if they were commonplace.
Unlike THE VET’S DAUGHTER, which is a pure work of fiction, SISTERS BY A RIVER is based on autobiographical elements of the author’s own childhood. That said, this is not a straightforward memoir. The book is presented as a series of loosely chronological vignettes of Barbara and her sisters’ lives growing up in a large country house in the rural Midlands. It is a strange childhood by any standards, suffused with misery, neglect and death, but presented without a shred of sentimentality. Indeed there is a thread of mordant humour at all times. The vast cast of minor characters are almost uniformly grotesque: from the aunt with feet like seal’s flippers who disinfects the meat before cooking, to the feckless local teacher whose hairpiece Barbara and her sister make it their ambition to dislodge.
The book slowly paints a picture of the the house, the village, and the family environment through Barbara’s childlike recollections. Although, despite the frequent misspellings which add an aura of youthful authenticity, the narrative voice is neither naive nor particularly innocent. The girls regularly inflict cruelties on each other and even small animals; hardly surprising in an environment where the grown-ups veer between violence and indifference.
If all this makes the book sound horribly depressing, I’m doing it a disservice. It’s a strange novel about a strange childhood, and the writing is beautifully evocative. It’s loose structure grabbed me slightly less than the tightly plotted VET’S DAUGHTER, but it was full of charm and insight into the unique mind of Barbara Comyns. I can’t wait to read more of her work.
8/10
Also published on my blog: https://stickypagesblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/sisters-by-a-river-by-barbara-comyns/
Unlike THE VET’S DAUGHTER, which is a pure work of fiction, SISTERS BY A RIVER is based on autobiographical elements of the author’s own childhood. That said, this is not a straightforward memoir. The book is presented as a series of loosely chronological vignettes of Barbara and her sisters’ lives growing up in a large country house in the rural Midlands. It is a strange childhood by any standards, suffused with misery, neglect and death, but presented without a shred of sentimentality. Indeed there is a thread of mordant humour at all times. The vast cast of minor characters are almost uniformly grotesque: from the aunt with feet like seal’s flippers who disinfects the meat before cooking, to the feckless local teacher whose hairpiece Barbara and her sister make it their ambition to dislodge.
The book slowly paints a picture of the the house, the village, and the family environment through Barbara’s childlike recollections. Although, despite the frequent misspellings which add an aura of youthful authenticity, the narrative voice is neither naive nor particularly innocent. The girls regularly inflict cruelties on each other and even small animals; hardly surprising in an environment where the grown-ups veer between violence and indifference.
If all this makes the book sound horribly depressing, I’m doing it a disservice. It’s a strange novel about a strange childhood, and the writing is beautifully evocative. It’s loose structure grabbed me slightly less than the tightly plotted VET’S DAUGHTER, but it was full of charm and insight into the unique mind of Barbara Comyns. I can’t wait to read more of her work.
8/10
Also published on my blog: https://stickypagesblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/sisters-by-a-river-by-barbara-comyns/
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