“Helling it like it is…”

120. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns

This book is very short and very strange. There’s a flood and rather awful family who are all either keeping to tradition by being a terrible human being (the matriarch) or trying to get away from said traditional Grandmother Willoweed. No one is super keen to help her, yet, even after the flood, she’s there ordering people around. After the flood, there are several descriptions of dead animals left behind… you know, the thing you never want to think about happening with floods if you like animals. And then there’s a spreading madness that continuously causes more illness followed by several suicides; the butcher’s suicide has a particularly odd description that was rather on the limits of dark humour. It seems the flood poisoned the whole village in a way that’s reminiscent of ergot poisoning.

I do like to try reading stories that I find described as disturbing elsewhere and I was reading this one because the other one by Barbara Comyns I found described as disturbing, The Vet’s Daughter, was not in my library system and this was. It reminds me a little bit of Rituals by David Pinner, although it precedes it by about 13 years in terms of being published, but the similarities such as the weirdo village elements and the lack of a grounding character that’s relatable while there’s all this grotesque stuff going on that makes no sense are major elements of both Rituals and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. And it’s also a little like the Gormenghast Trilogy with that mostly repellent, but slightly sympathetic (only Hattie or just a couple of the kids, really) Willoweed family. Two of the Gormenghast novels precede this, but only the family and their significant amount of senseless weirdness are similar. So, if you like the grotesque and senseless weirdness this is the short novel for you.

 

Wisting’s not sure if he wanted to join the senseless weirdness of this household, but he did anyway. It’s not as grotesque or senseless as this novel, so he was in luck.