Barbara Comyns (1909–1992) was born in Bidford-on-Avon,
in the English county of Warwickshire, one of six children of an
increasingly unsuccessful Birmingham brewer. Living on the run-down
but romantic family estate and receiving her education from
governesses, she began to write and illustrate stories at the age
of ten. After her father’s death, she attended art school in London
and married a painter, with whom she had two children she supported
by trading antiques and classic cars, modeling, breeding poodles,
and renovating apartments. A second marriage, to Richard Comyns
Carr, who worked in the Foreign Office, took place during World War
II. Comyns wrote her first book, Sisters by a River (1947), a
series of sketches based on her childhood, while living in the
country to escape the Blitz, which is also when she made an initial
sketch for The Vet’s Daughter (available as an NYRB Classic). This,
however, she put aside to complete Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
(1950) and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1954). The Vet’s
Daughter was published in 1959. Among Comyns’s other books are the
novels The Skin Chairs (1962) and The Juniper Tree (1985;
forthcoming from NYRB Classics), and Out of the Red into the Blue
(1960), a work of nonfiction about Spain, where she lived for
eighteen years.
Emily Gould is the author of the essay collection And the
Heart Says Whatever and the novel Friendship. She is the co-owner
of Emily Books and lives in Brooklyn.
"Comyns's world is weird and wonderful ... there's also something
uniquely original about her voice. Tragic, comic and completely
bonkers all in one, I'd go as far as to call her something of a
neglected genius." --Lucy Scholes, The Observer
"A Depression-era artist struggles with crippling poverty and
sexism in bohemian London; the result is a surprisingly charming
and funny novel...Much of the story revolves around issues of
reproduction, housework, and economic opportunity that contemporary
feminists would see as questions of justice. But Sophia narrates a
story of fairy tale-like fatality, casting an amused,
self-deprecating light on even the most painful moments."
—Kirkus starred review
"A startling, immersive excavation of poor, young womanhood and
marriage gone awry in 1930s London.” —Jane Yong
Kim, BOMB magazine
“Our Spoons contains one of the best distillations of Comyns'
peculiar style currently available stateside, and is essential for
understanding her dark, delightful oeuvre...calculatedly meek, yet
sharp enough to give you paper cuts.” —Amy Gentry, Chicago
Tribune
“Her capturing of youth is so fresh and accurate that nothing is
lost in the passing of decades. There is a modern sensibility at
play in her women and their experiences, their attitudes and
reactions towards love and sex, marriage and having
children...quietly startling...Comyns’s skill is subtle and
surprising...I felt both thrill and pride, and I expect as her work
continues to be reissued this sense of finding a hidden gem will be
shared by other readers, startled and attracted by her
talent.”—Lauren Goldenberg, Music and Literature
“A curious hybrid: a mixture of domestic disaster, social
commentary, comedy, and romance...What I find so really excellent
in this novel, in addition to Comyns’s powers of description and
the slow fuse of her comedy, is her ability to show the cold world
and its indecencies without spelling everything out...Comyns is a
virtuoso at portraying bad behavior...written beautifully, with
dash and economy, and…truly unique in [its] eccentric black comedy,
whether grotesque or ineffably subtle.” —Katherine A. Powers,
The Barnes & Noble Review
"I defy anyone to read the opening pages and not to be drawn in, as
I was . . . Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else" --Maggie
O'Farrell
"Comyn's voice has childlike qualities; she looks at everything in
the world as though seeing it for the first time. In later books,
though, her narrators' naivety is deployed in order to provoke
horror; the gap between what the reader knows and the narrator
doesn't serves to make the reader fascinated and fearful." --Emily
Gould, The Awl
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |