reviews
Mar 10, 2011
Charles Dee
rated it: 
Barbara Comyns' Sisters by a River has this in common with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Both Comyns and Tolkien wrote their stories to read to their children, neither initially had an eye toward publication. I can image the Tolkien children delighting to the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the lot, but I wonder what the Comyns' young ones made of this passage from a chapter titled God in the Billiard Room.
There was a funny light in the billiard room, and I wasn't really surprised wheMore...
Sep 06, 2010
Emily
rated it:
Have you read this insane and wonderful book? My friend Normandy gave it to me last night and I had to prevent myself from staying up til 4 in the morning to finish it. It's about being the neglected and strange child of a pre-WW2 vaguely aristocratic British family. I guess imagine Nancy Mitford with the quirkiness and sadism and childish hyperfocus lens turned up about 500%. I would especially recommend this book to my friend Sadie Stein for some reason. Sample sentence: "Mummy had alwa
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Dec 18, 2011
Sally
rated it: 
Lovely book that can only be described as the literary form of naive art! Comyns recounts episodes from her childhood brought up in a genteel if debt-laden family. It put me in mind of Nancy Mitford's accounts of her own family...Irascible Daddy, vague, deaf Mammy and six children, who for want of outside company spend much time together.
Comyns writes in a unique childlike style, with eccentric spelling and an antipathy to semicolons so that her phrases run into each other.
Far from b More...
Comyns writes in a unique childlike style, with eccentric spelling and an antipathy to semicolons so that her phrases run into each other.
Far from b More...
Dec 31, 2010
Carol
rated it: 
This slight novel was a dreamily told reminiscence of a vague, haphazard, and neglectful childhood at a British country manor during the early part of the 20th century. I believe it is based on the actual experiences of the author. The book takes the form of a series of first-person vignettes that form a hazy narrative of a country childhood. The narrator and her four sisters grow up benignly neglected by their parents, receiving perfunctory guidance and spotty education from a series of governe
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Jan 03, 2011
Despite my lukewarm reaction to her essay collection, I will still probably do anything Emily Gould tells me to do. Here is her telling me to read this obscure woman whom I've never heard of: http://www.theawl.com/2010/12/barbara-co...
Mar 10, 2010
Rebekah
rated it:
Another really good, unusual story by a writer with a style all her own.
Apr 18, 2011
Flora
rated it:
Really rather wonderfully odd. Told from that slightly skewed child's perspective (complete with spelling mistakes) that means that small things are intensely important while larger things are glossed over quite matter-of-factly.
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