“I picked up Barbara Comyns’s Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead when it was first reissued in 2010 but then had to put it aside. I began it again—and finished it—last week, and I’m so glad I did. The novel, originally published in England in
1954, concerns the Willoweed family and their reactions to an outbreak of madness and suicide in their small village. Its humor is by turns black and light, its characters morbid and delightful. An aberrant pastoral as smart as this one could only come from someone with a biography as nutty and wonderful as Comyns’s. A painter by training—she exhibited with the London Group—Comyns married and had two children. To support them, ‘she dealt in antiques and vintage cars, renovated apartments, and bred poodles. She later lived in Spain for eighteen years.’” —Nicole Rudick
For more of what we’re reading this week, click here.
For more of what we’re reading this week, click here.
