Latest / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast / Episode 75: Barbara Comyns

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Episode 75: Barbara Comyns · The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Trevor and hopefully having a Frabjous day.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, Paul, how are you doing?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing well.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what Frabjous means, but I think I might be having that kind of day.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to look it up, I guess.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I guess so.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, but I'm doing well.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying not to get blown away.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: We've been having nights telling you all kinds of crazy winds and things are flying out of the trees and you're in the middle of a snowstorm.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we're here despite it all.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Despite it all.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and also excited for it all.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: We are joined again by Nora.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nora, it's so nice to have you back.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm good.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me again.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's such an honor.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm fine if you just keep on coming back.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't bother me at all.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, please don't tell me.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he won't get rid of me anymore.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've enjoyed all of our interactions online, of course.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Loved having you as a guest in our prior episode about Spinster Lit.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: one of my favorite episodes I mean I can say that probably about most episodes but I just that one really made me stretch and think about a lot of the things that I enjoy about that kind of book and I really enjoyed that while we were doing that episode you were hosting kind of an Instagram where you'd post what people were reading for for spinster lit month
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: it was just a fun kind of everything all together and this time we get to have you come back for an author focus episode on an author that we've been planning on covering for some time but again I've just seen you talking about her work so often online I know that you had a project of reading most if not all of her books over the last little bit
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I read most of them.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's a couple of her books that are really hard to guess.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I read most of her books now.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm excited to hear.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've read a handful and I want to know which ones of the ones remaining I should read and which ones are, yes, you should read them, but not as urgently as, you know, one or two of the others.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And going through this, this is Barbara Comyns.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: that we'll be talking about I don't think I've mentioned that yet so excited to get to her books and we've talked about her work on the podcast before too because some of her books are among our favorites but before we get to that point I'd like to ask what have you been reading Nora are you ready do you want to tell us what you've been reading lately
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I used to love that question, but now I feel like I'm crumbling under so many read-alongs and group reads that I'm boarding nervous breakdown.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm not going to mention all the read-alongs I'm doing at the minute.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: I did manage to squeeze in a really tiny book this week, which is My Death by Lisa Toto.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: um i this came on my radar earlier this year at the end of last year it came on many people's best of the year list best of 2023 and uh i requested it i requested it from my library and uh yeah it came last week and i and it's like tiny 93 pages and um it is actually it's actually a good like good thing it came this week because there's some
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: There's some, what do you call it, like coincidence or some, I don't know, mirroring with Barbara Comyns in this book.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: So this is about a woman who's unnamed.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: She's a writer and she's American, but she lived in Scotland for a while and she recently lost her husband.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: So she's like battling with grief
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: and she can't write anymore she finds that she can't make up stories and she's worried because her savings are dwindling so she decides to contact her agent and they talk over what she could do and she wants to write a biography since fiction is not working for her at the minute she thinks that she's going to write non-fiction instead
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: and she decides to write about a woman a writer, an artist that she was obsessed with when she was a student and that woman has like forgotten voices in literature and so yeah she wants to explore her work and while she's doing so there's so many creepy coincidences like similarities between her life and the
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: Author's Life and that gives like a really unsettling atmosphere.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'd say this book is for people who love rabbit holes, people who are concerned with the erasure of women in history, in art history, in literature, people who love Virago books and people who are obsessed with their favorite books and
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: I want to talk about them all the time and think about how these books incarnate them and how... Yeah, that's pretty much it.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: It was fantastic.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's one I keep thinking, oh, I just need to sit down and read it because it's so short.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's so short.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think because of that, I always think, so I'll do that tomorrow.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'll sit down and read something else.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't read it yet, but a lot of people who have read it keep saying, no, you just need to get into it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: so have you read it Paul?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: I've not read it but everything she just described about the ideal reader sounds like I better get on it pretty soon because you are the ideal reader that's right at least for that one yeah I know that sounds wonderful yeah that sounds I think like the kind of books that you boys would love because you like backlisted books and you like rabbit holes and it's I think it's an interesting one or interesting that I read it now because Barbara Comyns is so much
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: in certain ways like that woman she's writing about in the way that she's been sort of like forgotten about and you know many people are obsessed with Barbara Comyns she's a bit of a cultish writer and I think yeah there's some interesting connection between these two books and as well this book is very much a mix between the everyday and the
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: a sense of horror and uncanny which I think Barbara Comyns does as well absolutely that's one of the most amazing things about reading is those connections sometimes they're planned but more often than not you're just reading two separate things and all of a sudden there's just like you said this serendipity that you realize it's the perfect time to read those two books together it's perfect
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Paul, how about you?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I have, kind of like Nora, I've been enmeshed in quite a few group reads, obviously one of which is Bolaño's Savage Detectives, which I'm very much enjoying our thread, you know, our conversations that are taking place around that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I won't touch so much on those since there's plenty of other places that we can do that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been listening to Leslie Jamison's new memoir that just came out called Splinters.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: and I've talked about her a lot in the past she's one of my very favorite non-fiction writers that's out there and so anytime I see that she has something new I get very excited this one is sometimes she's gravitated more towards essays but this is very much a memoir very personal look at motherhood
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: relationships divorce but also art and creativity so again it's ticking a lot of the boxes of the books that a lot of us love it's a really raw very raw book but as always you know it's just amazingly well written I really love everything that she does so I would recommend anybody who is a fan of hers or even if you're not to check that one out
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: but the one that I wanted to talk about today that I've been reading is Not Even the Dead by Juan Gomez Barsena translated by Katie Widmore and out from our friends over at Open Letter and so as some of you listeners may remember our friend Ron Restrepo recommended this book it was during our 2023 end of the year you know favorite books of the year episode and this was his top read of last year
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as I hear somebody like Ron say something like that, and then you tie in the fact that it's also from open letter, you know, all of my radar was going off.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so he explained it a little bit, but it basically kicks off in the 16th century in Mexico.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we're following an ex conquistador named Juan, who was hired by the Spanish crown to track down another person named Juan.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And in the book, he's known as Juan the Indian.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: and you know there's all kinds of comparisons for this book flying around you know Cormac McCarthy or Joseph Conrad and I can see why so far I'm probably about not too far in maybe like you know 100 pages or so but boy I just absolutely love it the language is just beautiful it's very much a page turner and I've been kind of disappointed this week because I have had kind of a busy week I was telling Trevor before we started recording so I haven't had as much time to just
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sit Down and Dig In but this is a book that I could very easily just sit and read big chunks of it at a time so I'll just read a real quick excerpt here so like I said he's an ex-conquistador he's aging and so it's kind of like one last mission kind of an idea you know where he's coming in and hasn't done this for a while and so this is him as he's setting out it says there was a time where he was a regular inhabitant of the roads and the posadas that cropped up along them
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't know what to do with those memories now.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: From his horse he sees things he has seen before and which now after so many years appear anew.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: He sees pine groves and embankments and labyrinthine fields and hills that still bear their pagan names and from which rise Castilian bell towers and villages.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: He sees revealed in the light of the sunset snowy peaks which in Indian memory were a pair of dead lovers and now are but two extinct volcanoes.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: He sees corn crops but also vineyards and wheat threshing floors and common pastures where flocks of sheep and herds of cattle graze.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: All come there from the other side of the Mar Oceana.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Every so often there's a small settlement or river bearing a Christian name.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: as if it sought to conjure in him a kind of nostalgia he only has to say the name of that village of that river of that small mountain to feel even farther away from home and so it goes on like that and hopefully that gives you a little idea of just it's beautiful writing and it's this journey that he's going on to track down this person but there's also just
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: lots of asides and different things where you're introduced to different characters in different villages as he's trying to track down Juan the Indian so anyway you know it's like I said I'm loving it I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of it and I was talking to Chad Post about it and he was telling me that it was one of his favorite books that they've put out so for anybody who hasn't heard of that one or has it sitting on the shelf I would definitely recommend grabbing it down because it's been wonderful so far
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: well I do have it sitting on my shelf yeah but I also have the book Nora recommended sitting on my shelf who do you love more Trevor I'm not sure what to do here 93 pages yeah right she might win this one's not too long but it's about 300 pages so if you're going for brevity you got to go with Nora
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it might I think that might win out on and plus the just the timeliness uh you know as we're doing this episode on Barbara Cummins so but I am reading something different too um one of the the prompts for my wife's uh library book club you know the the book uh bookmark that we fill out and we have to read 42 books in 2024 is a book set in Utah uh just to you know
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 75 Barbara Comyns Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know my library doesn't have it so I got it from interlibrary loan and it has come in and so I am I am jumping in there it's actually not very long you know this is not like Salka Balka it's less than 300 pages just barely it's 299 pages so it fits that bill this was originally translated by Magnus Magnusson and this is a kind of a revised translation that I think he did himself some 40 years later
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not very far into it yet and to be honest I'm not there wasn't something that I thought oh I'll read this particular passage it's introducing us to a man named Steiner who I know from the book's blurb
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: he is going to move from Iceland to go to Utah on the other end of the earth optimistically building a home for them among the devout polygamists in the promised land of Utah so I am really interested to see how all this plays out and you know there's some history and I don't know I'm excited about it but I'm not very far into it I'm actually just barely starting it and
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: it's not one that I even knew existed you know from this Nobel Prize winner but Terry Tempest Williams recommends it that's a pretty good recommendation for me it does have an introduction to this edition by Jane Smiley and I really like her work as well so enough enough recommendations that Paradise Reclaimed by Haldor Laxness is the book that I'll be you know aside just like the both of you from all of the
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: too many read-alongs I've joined I'm going to be doing this one on the site as well so looking forward to it that sounds fascinating that's a connection I never would have made in a million years I'll let you know how it goes but again you probably don't need to hear from me you like Terry Tempest Williams as well so she's saying to read on Paul read on I trust both of you so I will
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: all right I was very excited Nora when earlier this week might have even just been yesterday my time is kind of messed up but you posted a really cool picture on Instagram with nine books by Barbara Cummins as well as a bit of an explanation well just a nice review of her work
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: and it was it's so concise and succinct and yet telling that I recommend folks go and find it I will put it in the show notes your post and the thing that I really enjoyed is you you kind of go through and teach people what to expect when they get into a Barbara Comyns novel especially looking at realistic versus her maybe surrealistic or gothic styles
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: and boy do I love them now this list that you put here is this your you say it's your definitive ranking of her novels maybe we should let you explain that here in a little bit or whenever you want to you can go through it I love your ranking because it includes a lot of the books that I have in my top as well but
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I was being a bit dramatic when I said definitive but yeah these are the best yes but to be honest you know I had discussions with people regarding that that rank I could you know this could change and also I'm nitpicking I mean I think they're all great and the
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: The criteria I chose were really arbitrary.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I had to pick something, right?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I think they were great.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: And any of these you would pick, I think you would have a great time.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: and does that include your number nine The House of Dolls like that one's still one that you would say is a good a good Barbara Cummins novel or would you say if you read other books by her and you like them go to that one I'm just kind of curious because that is one that I have not read okay House of Dolls I would say it's a good it's a good novel and if you read Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont I think they have loads of similarities
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's about a boarding house where four older women live.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: They're like four or five women and they're all in their 50s or 60s and they are facing poverty.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're divorced, widowed or single and it's set in the 60s.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's like out of that period where you were supposed to depend on a man and now
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: all these younger women work but when you're an older person at that time you're still in that sort of mindset that you know the man takes care of everything and when you don't have a man in your life then you might be facing you know difficulties and maybe make weird decisions which I think those women maybe do to help you know facing their bills they decide to open a club let's say with
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: A Casual Gentleman.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's very Comynsian in the way that it's comedic, but it also talks about poverty and vulnerability.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I compare it to Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont because I think these are similar themes.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: So why put it at the ninth place?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's a bit of an outlier in the sense that it doesn't have the common ingredient that she uses in other novels.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is not the last novel she wrote.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: She wrote it in the 60s and she had trouble actually publishing it.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: People didn't really believe in this book.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is the last one published by her, but I guess that makes sense.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: She wrote it more maybe toward the middle of her career.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Did you see what she did there, Trevor?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Nora, she has it in her last ranked Comyns book, but then she compares it to one of our all-time favorite books.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I don't think there's any bad comments.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, I know.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: and then her last publication but not her last book written was The House of Dolls published in 1989 so four decades of publishing she died in 1992 and her first book was published when she was basically 40 years old so she lived a long life she died at 84 and it was her last four decades that she was really publishing you know
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: but you know kind of taking Nora's definitive you know rankings to heart here you put it at number four that's pretty high and I know you like all of them but I'm you know I'm taking this as a pretty high ranking novel that you have her debut another interesting thing to me is you put it both as realistic and gothic
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: it's the only one on here that you have an R and a G next to and so I wondered if you could help me you know feel what that book is about and is it a good place for people who are getting to know Barbara Cummins to enter her world or again is it something that might be better once you have some context
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'd say it's one of the three novels I would advise to start with because I think this is the beginning of Barbara Comyns.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: This is her memoir or maybe autofiction would be a better word to characterize this novel.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is her childhood so this is really the beginning and this is, as you said, her first novel.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: The only thing that I might be wary of when I suggest that reading is that the format is a bit weird, it's quite fragmented and also there are loads of spelling mistakes that her publisher
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: decided to keep because it's told from the point of view of a child so they thought it was quite cute and authentic but in reality it was her own spelling mistake she didn't have much of an education and she was actually mortified when her publisher decided to keep those
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: and I know that some people are really quite put off by those mistakes and grammar bizarre grammar but I didn't think it was an issue and I love the story it reminded me of Oh Caledonia by Elspeth Barker and a bit of I Captured a Castle as well and it also reminded me of The Met for Sisters because there are six sisters and they're all a bit you know
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: childhood is very different from the mid-40s.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: She was, you know, brought up in poverty, I would say, like her background is middle upper class, but things were not going well.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: So you have like this crumbling mansions with loads of animals.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: There's a peacock called Philip and
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: All Sorts of Animals and I said it's both realistic and gothic because well it's her childhood but there's a gothic aspect to it her you know her dad was quite a short-tempered man violent man and there's a sense of threat because of that in the novel and as I said the setting is quite dark and whimsy in a way this rural England near a river that keeps flooding as well That's interesting I had read
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: you mentioned the typos I had read that her publisher actually not only kept her typos or her spelling errors but actually added in some extra ones which I guess they said was pretty controversial and it's one of the things about the way that she's regarded that you know she can be almost diminished sometimes by publishers because of her lack of education so that's kind of a controversial choice there was a really popular book at the time I think
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting though because while I get the controversy and I think it is diminishing one of the things that I love about two of her novels The Vet's Daughter and Our Spoons Came from Woolworths is the voice and the voice is very much of somebody who is intelligent somebody who who
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's the spelling mistakes that make it come home.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is her beautiful ability to, with slight turns of phrase, to both encapsulate a young woman's voice, someone who has been abused, somebody who has been trying to figure out how do I get through every single day with these cruel people around me.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: and yet who is able to express some absolutely profound thoughts with that kind of reticent voice innocent I would say may be the wrong word for what I'm looking for for what I'm trying to say but there is a and naive doesn't quite get there either she has been taught you know these characters that she puts this voice with
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara Comyns
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: in some ways understand and and empathize and care for um these these characters in ways that most other authors i just don't think could do it it's really remarkable i was reading you know when they were saying that she can be marginalized or kind of condescended to in some ways but they were saying um
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading a lot of the different intros for the NYRB editions and then I think we all had read this wonderful biography, Savage Innocence, about her too.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Coming out, just to put in a plug, it's not quite out when this episode goes up but it comes out later on this month.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: on March what is it March 19th is when it comes out here in the US and it is published by Manchester University Press it is Avril Horner's biography Paul and I kind of stumbled around trying to to find it live on an episode and we couldn't do it but I knew that Nora had had mentioned that I'd seen it you know others mentioning it and here it's coming and they were kind enough to give
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Paul and I a digital review copy and Nora has shown your lovely package that you got from them a few months ago with that too so a lot of what we might be saying here getting some of these insights might be coming from not just these introductions to other editions or Wikipedia but from
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Avril Horner's New Biography.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and one of the insights that I got from reading all of this was while it's easy to kind of dismiss, you know, her work because of her lack of formal education and things like that, there was a couple of phrases that I pulled out like destabilizing, did I say that right?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Destabilizing, there you go.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm keeping that in, Paul.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, please don't.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Destabilizing.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: her destabilizing inconsistencies in tone are deliberate and they were saying that a lot of what she does with her characters it may seem like it's this kind of naivety but it was very she knew what she was doing and she was very masterful in the way she did it and they said she wanted to catch readers off guard and so there's this phrase I like it says so charming daffiness runs right alongside frank and understated evocations of what it's like to be young female and crushingly poor
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: and I really liked that because that really sums up what she does so well where there is that daffiness and it can almost seem whimsical but then there's also these you know like they said the crushing realities of life and what it was like to be a woman at certain times or in certain situations and she just manages to do something better than any author that I can think of in kind of walking that tightrope and you never know what's coming next it's so fascinating
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think, Trevor, when you mentioned that, you know, when you read her and there's innocence, but also a lot of wisdom there, if you look at her sentences, it's not like just one point of view of one Barbara at one time.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's Barbara, like, young and innocent, but it's also Barbara older with insights, like, seeping into that sentence.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, that's why I think there's so much wisdom and innocence in every of our sentences and it creates an interesting sort of travel-timey, bizarre effect.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: I've got here a sentence if you want an example of that.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, please.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's from...Oarspoons came from Woolworth and she says, I had a kind of idea.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: If you control your mind and said, I won't have any babies very hard,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: but it also shows that this is this is what it meant to be you know all those things Paul just mentioned a woman crushingly poor there's a lot of lack of desire to educate a lot of lack of desire to help these people learn and yet at the same time everyone around them looks and says look what you did to yourself
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: and and no one has told her you need to watch out for this kind of situation you need to you know there today and not for everybody but there is a little bit more of the language to communicate about these situations to hope to avoid them or
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara Comyns is far from naive, far from uneducated and unintelligent.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of her story to expose a lot of that.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just love the way Our Spoons Came from Woolworths even begins.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here is the narrator after some horrible things that we're going to read about have already happened and I think she prepares her reader well.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I told Helen my story and she went home and cried I think that is one of the best first sentences to a book ever it's so simple it's so direct it's so evocative and it's like do I want do I want to keep reading here right and you know she goes on and says in the evening
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I try to keep it pushed right at the back of my mind.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't quite forget it because of Sandro and often I find myself regretting lovely little Fanny.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I hadn't told Helen so much.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's brought everything back in a vivid flash.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can see Charles' white, pointed face and hear his husky, nervous voice.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: I keep remembering things all the time I mean from that great opening sentence to this amazing opening paragraph where you have somebody in denial and saying everything's good now I'm just so happy now I hardly dare acknowledge it
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: as long as I don't think about it too much and I told Helen too much you know these are things that are that are absolutely bearing down on her every single day all day her best hope is that she can just forget about it long enough but she says there at the end I keep remembering things all the time I mean what
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: What a shame to discount that as some, you know, uneducated or naive perspective.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much in that paragraph alone and so much in that book.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just her second novel.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's her second book that she wrote, you know, published in 1950, a few years after Sisters by a River.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just remarkable.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: another thing that's so powerful about that book is I was reading it was in the introduction and they were saying a lot of times when that was written childbirth the idea of childbirth kind of happened off stage it might be a sentence or something like that this book is relatively short and three full chapters are devoted
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: to Childbirth so what we were saying about her like putting the reader into the mind and the body of these women who are going through these things you know alone or with very little support you know this is a perfect example of that i mean three entire chapters devoted to childbirth and it is just so tough to read about because of just the environment and and her being so naive and young and everything so yeah it's it's so good
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of the reasons why I put Our Spoon so high in my list, I think, apart from being such a good book.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's also a great document of women's life.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like you said, Paul, childbirth is never described, at least at her time.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: I can't imagine the bravery it took for her to write about that.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: And also, it's a great document for public health in England before the NHS.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: you know the insight the insight we have the conditions she was in that in a hospital is just insane and I don't think anyone has written about that like like she did so that's another aspect I really like about Barbara Comyns is that she's avant-garde in some ways she's talking about subjects before you know before her time she even mentions
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: in Our Spoon's Female Pleasure, which wasn't talked about.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: She has a little sentence like, you know, you could blink and miss it.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: But she says, sometime later when I realized I had been unfaithful, I didn't feel guilty or sad.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: I just felt awfully happy I had had this experience, which if I had remained a good wife, I would have missed.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: Although, of course, I wouldn't have known what I was missing.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: I felt quite bewildered.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: I had one and a half children.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: I had been a kind of virgin the whole time.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: I wondered if there were other women like this, but I knew so few women intimately, it was difficult to tell.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, she's, like I said, quite brave to talk about those subjects and Our Spoons is so brilliant for an insight about life of women at that time.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say on that note of I wonder if other women experience this again that's one of the so important things about her work is there must have been a lot who looked at this and said
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know this happened to anybody else.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was just me, but to have that connection, so important.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I was just going to say one of the other things about that book, because it is fairly autobiographical, is the bohemian lifestyle that she experiences, which does include the crushing poverty, but also some of the artistic circles that she ran in.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's really important, too, because that ended up branching out into some of these other aspects of her works, like where she was exposed to surrealism
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know in this wonderful biography we get little glimpses of how she started to visit these artworks and things like that and I think that played a big role in kind of some of the weirdness and and the other things that pop up later on in her work so it's you don't want to ever read too much into the autobiographical parts of novels because it is fiction but it is also fascinating reading it alongside the biography to see where some of these little seeds might have been planted that germinate later on in her books
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: yeah I thought that reading that biography so far it was fascinating because after reading all over books I could see all the elements she had been using and yeah she does mine a lot from her life it's difficult for me to like differentiate what's Barbara what's Sophia what's Victoria it's her in so many ways
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: yeah so why don't we can just kind of keep on walking through a little bit so our spoons came from Woolworths and then we have another one that I read I read it about 10-15 years ago I think when when the Dorothy Project published it it's Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead published in 1954
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: What a strange book all of a sudden, you know?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking if you've read along with Barbara Cummins and you're thinking here's two somewhat autobiographical books
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: and then Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, I'm not sure if this is one that you have read.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have you read this one?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: I have.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: I read it just earlier this year and I did not know what to expect, but I really, really liked it.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was pretty blown away by it, actually, and I immediately recommended it to my wife and she loved it, too.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to give us a little bit of an introduction for people who haven't read it?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure, yeah.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think all of us have here, but there are listeners who haven't.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this, I don't know how relevant it is or how much it matters, but it is actually based on a true historical event that she read about and then kind of got this inspiration.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we follow this family called the Willow Weeds and they live in this little English village and so
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: I will say this has one of the greatest opening probably two pages it's it talk about just her uncanny weird stuff but anyway this village is in the middle of a flood and so there's like ducks swimming into the drawing room windows and there's like different birds they're committing suicide and it's just so bizarre it just drops you straight in so anyways it's following this village that's being flooded and we spend some time with all the different characters there's bakers and there's
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know I mean it isn't just that this is it is it does have a feeling of being surreal when the opening line is the ducks swam through the drawing room window right the weight of the water had forced the windows open so the ducks swam in round the room they sailed quacking their approval then they sailed out again to explore the wonderful new world that had come in the night I think unless you think that this is some weird thing you'll you know what's going on
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: right especially with the title right yeah exactly I will say there there is a a tragedy and it impacts this town and this is a book that despite the kind of whimsical nature of that opening sentence boy it is dark there are some extremely dark things that what I was saying earlier about how she
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking at the introduction which is by Bryan Evanson and he said, In this novel in particular, she is better than any other writer I know at striking an impossible balance between accuracy, wonder, and disgust.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: She creates a paradoxical sense of a world that might want to embrace you lovingly, unless instead it wants to smother you.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: What it will do in the end matters less than the way in which Comyns almost effortlessly engineers that vision of the range of possibility and allows us to maintain our shaky perch suspended above it.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was a wonderful description of this book.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, I don't know.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm probably not doing a very good job of describing it as so often happens with a book that you really love, but I think it was just a mixture of like these really quirky and fascinating characters
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: but it it wasn't um but it managed somehow to still like like I said create that weird gothic strangeness that she's so well known for it's it's really a classic example of what she does like she mixes fantastical and very ordinary mundane thing I was just like going through the book uh some sorry some excerpts I had on my phone earlier and I kind of giggled but
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: I guess it's a bit dark but there's a body they're carrying in bags that they used to carry force through Barb I was like such a weird contrast but she does that all the time contrasting macabre things and really mundane everyday stuff yeah she gets you on your toes
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of, why don't we go on to the next one of her publications published in 1959.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nora, you put it as your number one on this list.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's my number one.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, is The Vet's Daughter your number one?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 75 Barbara Comyns Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: seems to be kind of naive and innocent she's got a father who is is cruel he's a veterinarian that's the vet in the in the title and boy does this book keep you on your toes or off your toes I guess eventually um and you know the the the original book cover I love it certainly spoils a bit of the of the the surprise of the book but I don't think I was expecting like I didn't
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: This very realistic fear and terror that's going on there from our narrator Alice Rowlands
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: and again the book the book keeps it going i mean it's it's hard it's it's it's a they're brutal passages and it and it does take some twists and turns that seem to emphasize that the desire to just get out of there to just escape and i and i i think this is a masterpiece personally i don't know what else to say because i want to spoil it but
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: one thing I'll say is I think a lot of her books are rightfully compared to like fairy tales or have a fairy tale element and this does but to me this one also has kind of a Dickensian like where you're along with this innocent person or this person who is thrust into these just brutal circumstances you think of like David Copperfield or something like that where you just follow him from
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: yeah there's a part where I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that pretty early on in the story her mother passes away and her mother is kind of in that situation that Trevor just described where her father is abusive and and very you know not nurturing the opposite of nurturing her mother was a little bit of an island for her she would tell her stories about her childhood that would give her a glimpse that there's more out there than this rough life that she's experiencing
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: and when her mother passes away there's this really heartbreaking passage that I pulled out that says, And just reading that stuff it's just so heartbreaking but
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: it ties into like we talked about we don't want to give away spoilers but things that happen later in the book it just makes it all that much more heartbreaking and complex some of the different twists and turns that take place in this book yeah I would say this book is probably one of my favorite books ever and I read it exactly 10 years ago and I wanted to read it before the biography and I was really nervous because you know when you created a link with a book
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: you just don't want it to break or feel like you change as a person or whatever and when you know as soon as I read the first page I knew that it was okay and more than that you know I reread it after reading all of her books I think this is her best in so many ways but there's something about her writing here she we talked about you know characteristics of her writing that sort of childlike innocence and
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: I often feel like when I read her books it's like opening a cabinet of curiosities there's loads of stuff to look at and she does that in The Best Daughter but she works a lot on her soundscape as well like loads of sounds are being described like
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: you said the soundscape I was remembering the passage I think it's right after the passage that Trevor just read when her father kind of charges at her and there's this really threatening abusive thing and then the parrot that they keep in their home starts doing this like really creepy maniacal laughing and just oh something about that really just gave me the chills it was that really macabre like yeah and again it's the mix that parrot and all the animal sounds are
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: like many rereads you have you can notice things and there's a depth there yeah can I ask you how both of you came to Barbara Cummins you should remember
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to think about this and I think I might have touched on this in one of our previous episodes I'm pretty sure I can directly attribute it to Mr. Trevor there I think it was either his blog or maybe even the former iteration of this podcast maybe him talking to his brother Brian I don't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure it was Trevor and NYRB that combination through the vet's daughter that that's how I came to her
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: For me, the first one I ever read was Who Has Changed and Who Was Dead?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was because it was so strange of an opening.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think Dorothy had sent me a review copy and I didn't know a whole lot about her and just thought, all right, this looks interesting.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as I got into it, I thought this is really crazy kind of in a good way, a way that I really, really loved.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely became a Head Over Heels fan with The Vets Daughter.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just loved it.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of NYRB's very early books.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was 2003 is when they first published it.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it had been available, but I don't even think I had seen it or looked into it until after Who Has Changed and Who Is Dead.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: and then I put her kind of aside not deliberately but just thinking someday I'll read more of her work and that's when eventually they published
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our Spoons came from Woolworths in 2015 and I thought okay this is not just one of my favorite books but one of my favorite authors and then The Juniper Tree in 2018 just kept on you know kind of getting her a refresher based on publications but that's how I first stumbled onto her
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: What I have not done that I would really like to do is go and find the books that aren't really available here in the U.S.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: handily.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Books that like Daunt Book has been republishing over the last few years or that maybe even haven't been published by anybody since Virago published them in the 80s you know as reissues.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those I don't have so like Sisters by a River I don't think it's published anywhere other than Virago in in
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara Comyns
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: or Barbara Cummins or Tessa Hadley are some of these ways that you know along with people that I know in real life who are helpful and patient and and able to to help me learn but it is a lot of times these books that have made it really come home again in ways I know I'm still limited and restricted but
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: they are just vital for that understanding that would otherwise be an absolute blind spot of my own experiences or within my own experiences and I'm assuming there's a lot more in some of these middle books that I haven't read because once we get to The Vet's Daughter I haven't read Out of the Red into the Blue but I don't see it on your list either Nora that's from 1960
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: yeah no I just couldn't find it sometimes you can find them on eBay if you're really patient but it looks like I mean again I'm just going off of you know limited sources but it looks like that one has never been republished by like Virago or anything it's just I don't think she was very I don't think she was very proud of that one either if I remember correctly from the biography so yeah
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_03: but then we get The Skin Chairs in 1962 I've not read that one nor have I read Birds in Tiny Cages which I think is that the other one that you had not read you've read 9 of her 11 I've read The Skin Chairs but I've not read Tiny Birds but I've just been given a link I think this is legit from the internet archive it's I guess royalty free so you can access it from there
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: okay yeah so those I have not read like The Skin Chairs though Paul and I haven't read that one it has a quite a compelling title you know I was gonna say that's the one that without knowing too much about it that's one of the ones I haven't read that calls to me probably because of the title
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: How's that one?
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's another of a gothic fair I would say it's about a young girl called Frances she's 10 years old and she's just lost her dad and because of that her family have to downsize because it didn't need much money so they have to adapt to a new like a new smaller home in a English village
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: so there's that adaptation and her facing her grief and her fear and also it's a it's a portrayal of a rather eccentric rural village in England you have all these interesting characters she has this neighbor who is who sounds to me like a
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, Paul.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: I love that you've got the Virago in your picture here.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: It does have a great cover, as so many of them do.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the skin chairs.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then Birds in Tiny Cages, none of us have read, came out in 64.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get to her last four, all of which, Nora, you have on your list here.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: and I've only read one of them but A Touch of Mistletoe was 1967 and was republished by Daunt Books back just a couple years ago in 2021 and is it is it a Christmas one should we read it at Christmas time or is that just you know I don't think I would be spoiling to say that mistletoe have nothing to do with with Christmas it's actually quite a quite dark image
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: apparently Missile Zoe the plant is quite parasitic and goes over the trees and just like choke them so she uses that as an image for mental illness so how mental illness can choke your vitality and that book is quite similar again to her life it covers a longer period than most of her books we follow a Victoria Green from I think her 18th birthday to her 16th so you have like a
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: for sure no that sounds good too all right I will I'll try not to to save it for a festive um time of year but they're quite beautiful moments I don't there are moments I don't know it's it's always but they're like I really like her sense of home that's one of the things that really attracts me to her writing and
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_03: and again that's something that mirrors her real life she moved I think about 30 times in her life she she moved quite a lot and so she has quite a a strong sense of trying to be at home and making home home and she also has quite a strong sense of aesthetics so in a lot of her books she trying to make a home for her kids and for herself so you see her painting the walls or the furniture
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_03: and there's something really quite domestic and enchanting in those books and you have that in Touch of Mistletoe she paints the ceiling in a sort of sky pattern with stars and the flat where she lives face a toy factory so she looks at the toys so for me there's something quite doll house-like and that enchants me in her settings
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: all right well the next one I have read and it is The Juniper Tree her her her book from uh 1985 so she had she had written A Touch of Mistletoe published in 1967 and then this was the next book published you know nearly 20 years later and I love this one as well it's not my favorite you know I would rank the other each of the other ones above it but
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: Similar to what you were saying earlier, Nora, it's not because this is a bad one and not worth your time.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is a great retelling of one of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, number 47, The Juniper Tree, which is such a horrible
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara Comyns kind of pulls it and its horrors of you know murdering a stepson using the body all these things and puts it into suburban England but it's still she still retains the horror and boy boy this one
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: This one again has that weird matter-of-fact approach to life that we get in The Vet's Daughter and Our Spoons Came from Woolworths.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just this direct prosaic almost approach to it and yet it has that fairy tale aspect to it and that fairy tale horror to it.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: weaving in some of the autobiographical stuff again with like the antique store which was something that she did dabble with in her real life and I think that adds a really fascinating element to this book as well like you were saying with some of the settings Nora like in this particular book the setting of the antique store with some of the other stuff going on around it is is a very like when I think back on this book that's one of the things that really sticks with me
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: and I think it's worth mentioning too it's really interesting not only is this a single mother who's struggling with poverty but she's also a person of color which is kind of an interesting um her daughter yeah her daughter is I should say yeah um and that's just kind of an interesting we were talking about the bravery of her you know
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: trying to put herself into different points of view or put the reader into different points of view I think that that's just worth mentioning it's another way that she like we talked about with childbirth or some of these different things where she's not afraid to to add these elements and kind of really explore what that means to people so so what are your thoughts on this one Nora um I know it's not one of your your high ranked ones on on this list but is it is it one that you enjoy or are you kind of like ah it's a bit of an outlier
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I enjoyed it as well.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_03: I would rank it lower.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_03: The reason why I ranked it lower is because I think the middle feels a bit directionless and doesn't have enough tension.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_03: But I was thinking that if you think the middle is more like slice of life,
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: Barbara Comyns
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_03: she talks about the skin colour of her kid a lot it felt like she was othering her quite a lot
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: that's fair no for sure very fair yeah I was again I'll not to read too many of the introductions but I really liked the introduction to this one from NYRB and they said among Comyns devotees it's divisive and I like this description uncanny yet matter-of-fact spooky yet gentle naive and knowing meticulous and strangely careless it is considered by some to be among her most endearing works while others dismiss it as chaotic to me it's both and therein lies its charm
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: and I thought that was fair because I agree with you it doesn't work consistently throughout and there was ups and downs within it and I like both of you I think I would rank it probably of the four that I've read at the bottom so far but again there's so much there you know it's absolutely worth reading and I do have very very strong memories of specific parts of it and scenes out of it
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_03: yeah she has such a great sense of place I mean she gives you like literary memories all the time and I like the the you mentioned the antique shop the sort of contrast between the coziness and the of the antique shop and then the more gothic or macabre elements of the fairy tale I really like that mix and I was thinking um that Barbara Comyns is like an author for people like um
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_03: who like Alice in Wonderland because I think she sort of walks on that same sort of line where she mixes mundane and whimsy and fantastical and threatening and also at the same time being very English or British so yeah I think she mixes all these elements really well and that's one reason why I love her
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_00: well thanks for bringing it back to Lewis Carroll for Paul to go back and figure out what Frab just means well we already talked about the last book published or you know Paul and I hadn't read it The House of Dolls but not her last book written so let's let's talk about though one that you ranked
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: Very high again, Nora, your third, you know, with Our Spoons Came from Woolworths and The Vet's Daughter just ahead of it.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: Mr. Fox, published in 1987.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is another one, along with The Skin Chairs, Mr. Fox is the other one that I keep on kind of eyeing and thinking I need to get to that one sooner.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's based again on Barbara Comyns' life and more on her life through World War II and it's a great document of life during the London Blitz as a single
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_03: yeah I really like that aspect of it and there's an amazing scene in it where I think it's the first time that London is being bombed or no the first time there's what you call it a an alert a bomb alert yeah so there is it's basically people trying to work at what they have to do in case of emergency and they have to go to shelter and all that
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_03: and she goes to her shelter but she has a dog with her and apparently back then you couldn't get into shelters with dogs so she just runs on the streets with her dogs and such a cinematic scene where she's with her dog running through like London like crazy and it's such an amazing scene and again a point of view I've never read about before
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_03: and it's also based on her relationship with Arthur Price in the biography who was like a schemer grifter somebody who was you know trying to again live through the World War II through the black market and it was a great education for Barbara Comyns because that's how she learned how to be independent and trying to make money through different ways like breeding poodles or
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: yeah there we are we've got to we've got to jump on this together I guess I think so and I just want to to keep exploring it's kind of fun though too to to realize that there's still several in front of us it's not someone that we're already done reading their their work so there's that at least and seeing Nora's list is fascinating because so many of the ones that I might have you know naively considered to be like
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've gone through the bibliography.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_03: I have not read any of her short stories and I did not look at them today to like think oh let's dig into these but she did publish some short stories before she started publishing her novels I don't think they're available I mean looking from the biography I tried to look on the internet they were published in some magazines but I didn't find any traces of them and that's something I've been wondering is there
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It would be fun to find out and explore that a little bit better.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember reading a lot about that in the biography either.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_03: interestingly enough yeah she didn't seem like well first I think she was somebody like you said she started writing officially quite late she did she did write younger but she decided to burn everything because she thought it was too imitative but then after that she was working a lot to feed her kids and the reason why Sisters by River is so fragmentary is because she didn't have much time to write to write then she was a housekeeper and at night she would type on the
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_03: type machine stories for kids so they know her childhood and you see later on like several times in the biography Avril Horner highlights the fact that she couldn't really get into the groove of writing unless she felt safe and I don't think there were that many periods in her life where she had that safety she had a sort of routine at some stage where she would write between 5 a.m and 7 a.m before all the houses would wake all the house would wake up
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_00: interesting I think we've gone through it all of course there's a lot more riches to explore and we'll continue these conversations and listeners I hope to hear from you you know some of your favorite Barbara Cummins books or if she's new to you or someone that you've been circling you know trying to think where to dive in you know has this helped has this pushed you one way or the other we're all big fans here
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_00: and and so I wouldn't mind maybe ending um Nora and you know Paul you can jump in too uh if you have something but Nora you started this project of I'm gonna read her books and I know that you had read some of her books before you know like you said a decade ago and were kind of worried about rereading it but what was it that that that led you to say I'm reading all of them that I can get my hands on I'm reading this biography I'm going to to really dig in and
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_03: I would say Barbara Comyns but I'd only read The Best Daughter it just had such an impact on me and yeah I felt like I need to read more but I think I mentioned before I sort of I'm very passive or I used to be very passive in my reading and I would only read what I find in secondhand shops and she's not somebody you would easily find here but then when I
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_03: The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast featuring Trevor Berrett titled Episode 75 Barbara Comyns
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_03: yeah it's ridiculous that I've only read a few I mean I had found I think Our Spoons and Sisters by a River a few years ago so that's where I was when I started my project of reading Comyns last year and it was really interesting to read them all in quick succession because I feel like I found stuff that or like yeah I realized stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise um and I think uh Trevor you we were talking before the recording um
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_03: about stuff that didn't quite work when it comes to Comyns for us and there's something for me that I discovered while reading her in quick succession I felt like her endings are often felt feels like they feel like a limb that have been attached like she she tend to go for very happy endings not always but I feel like they always feel a bit off-kilter with her books
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: and that's maybe something because I read them in quick succession that I noticed but when I read Mr. Fox there's a passage that's actually that Avril Horne used as an entry point for her biography in Mr. Fox she says or the main character says
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_03: In the back of my mind, I was always sure that wonderful things were waiting for me, but I'd got to get through a lot of horrors first.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_03: So that quote sort of unlocked something for me in the way that I understood what she was doing.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_03: She's somebody who's really optimistic about herself, but also her characters.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_03: And funny enough, it really mirrors her life.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_03: She's been financially unstable all her life, and it's only in her seventies that
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_03: I love that connection, that's perfect.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: yeah and I had something I was going to ask as you were going through that but it slipped my mind I enjoyed your explanation there Nora it's cool because you're an expert you know really and know that you've dug in and I've learned a lot today just in our conversation from your insights I am curious now to go back and re-read thinking of these these
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Endings because I think I've always thought they're similar to the beginning of Our Spoons came from Woolworths where it's like everything is so good now as long as I don't think about it yeah but I mean even when you think about it for in Our Spoons she like she goes from intense poverty to that sort of fairy tale cottage in England it's just so weird and I feel like all her characters go through that and
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_03: in some ways you're happy because you're rooting for them but in other ways I don't know one of the reasons why I rated Mr. Fox high in my list is I think that the ending works really well for the main character it's not like the happy ending has some depth and maturity to it
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_01: I really love that connection you made because that is something that has I wouldn't say it's bothered me but I've noticed that same thing with the endings and you tying it into her outlook on life and especially after having read this biography her resilience and her ability to continue to redefine herself and get knocked down and come back again I think connecting that with those endings actually works really well for me so I'm so glad you brought that up that's perfect
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_00: yeah it's a good way to kind of wrap things up here not you know just because it I don't know I'm a fairly optimistic person as well but it is good to to to see all of this and and grapple with it well anyway that was a little bit of a ramble from me at the end there but
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_00: um thanks so much for joining us again Nora I hope you're back soon um with another topic of your choosing we'd love to have you and again thanks for prepping for this never never no I've actually I've been I was looking at I don't think you've posted are you doing a weekend reads uh real on Instagram today I should but I think I'm a bit like out of voice now yeah we spoiled that yeah
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_00: darn I really enjoy those all the time so I don't I don't see us as getting tired of it anytime soon for sure but thanks so much Paul thank you too we've got some work to do together you know as we go forth on our Barbara Cummins reading so absolutely thanks Nora it's great to see you again
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_00: and thanks listeners again please please please do let us know your thoughts on Barbara Comyns give us some some things that if you're if you're willing we can share on upcoming episodes as we share your thoughts too thanks so much everybody thank you for listening to this episode of The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast you can follow The Mookse and the Gripes and get show notes and book and film reviews at mooksandgripes.com
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_01: On Twitter, you can find Trevor at Mookse and Paul at BiblioPaul.
• 1:22:51
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• 1:22:55
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• 1:23:01
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• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time.