'Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else.' --Maggie O'Farrell, author of Hamnet 
That evening the baker's wife ran down the village street in a tattered pink nightgown. She screamed as she ran. 
Strange things are afoot in the English village where the Willoweed family live. First, the river floods in June. The family wakes to find ducks sailing around the drawing room and dead peacocks bobbing in the garden. But the flood is only the beginning of their troubles. 
All of a sudden the miller goes mad and drowns himself. Then the butcher slits his throat. A peculiar illness is spreading through the town and picking off its victims one by one. 
From the Willoweed cottage, sisters Emma and Hattie watch the tragedy unfold. They have grown up in the village, cared for by their meek father and bullied by their grandmother with her enormous ear trumpet. The wild and mysterious countryside is the only world they have ever known. But as the virus spreads and hysteria grips everyone around them, they realise their lives are about to change forever. 
Originally published in 1954, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is a twisted pandemic parable and a tragicomic gem. 
'One of the most distinctive voices in English literature - and ripe for rediscovery.' -- Telegraph 
'The pleasure in reading Comyns comes from her pure, runaway imagination . . . Her novels are honest yet dreamy, full of innocence and experience' -- TLS

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

Literature & Fiction

BARBARA

Comyns

Contemporary

Daunt Books

The morning I left home Mother was recovering from being poorly and she’d been sick in the vegetable basket. 
Sisters Victoria and Blanche grow up in their grandfather's house in Warwickshire. It’s a secluded existence: their mother is a war widow with a thirst for port and sherry and their last governess leaves never to be replaced. When their grandfather dies, their mother replaces drink with housework and the girls plan their escape. 
Blanche heads off to train as a model at a dubious institution in London. Vicky wants to study art but answers an ad leading her to Holland, where she tends a pack of miserable bull terriers. This is just the beginning of the sisters’ adventures which take them from the poverty of cooking eggs over a candle in their Mornington Crescent bedsit, to a wider bohemian world, as they encounter love and the fluctuating fortunes that come when you’re open to the strange twists life can take. 
First published in 1967, A Touch of Mistletoe is a unique coming of age story that shows Barbara Comyns's inimitable voice at its best.

A Touch of Mistletoe

Megan Nolan

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