#barbara comyns

[trentsgirlfriend]

[rherlotshadow]

'A Touch of Mistletoe' by Barbara Comyns

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The House of Dolls | Author: Barbara Comyns | Publisher: Turnpike Books (2020)

[writerly-ramblings]

Books Read in March:

1). Garments Against Women (Anne Boyer)

2). Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (Barbara Comyns)

3). Enter Ghost (Isabella Hammad)

4). During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (Joan Chase)

5). Animal, Vegetable, Junk (Mark Bittman)

6). The Gospel of Orla (Eoghan Walls)

7). State of Wonder (Ann Patchett)

8). Occasional Prose (Mary McCarthy)

9). The Hero of This Book (Elizabeth McCracken)

10). The Tea Ceremony (Gina Berriault)

11). Double Blind (Edward St. Aubyn)

12). Rapture (Susan Minot)

13). Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (bell hooks)

14). The Friend Who Got Away (ed. Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell)

15). The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood (Belle Boggs)

16). Birnam Wood (Eleanor Catton)

17). How to Think Like a Woman (Regan Penaluna)

[neonpajamas]

After Our Spoons

after Barbara Comyns

“You married a newt!” said the nuisance to the bride. She did not cry. She pocketed an artist and they made bohemian babies. Crazy and tender and kind. Later, she wrote by bedside feather, bills untethered, framed paintings unwashed. With a cloth she dunked her eggs in gasoline, said the bleached cream rid the shells of mildew, voodoo, worry. Her audience nodded along. The evening a firework, the nighttime a dog.

[hairtusk]

also: began reading the vet's daughter by barbara comyns just before lunch, and finished it in one sitting before supper. i can't remember that last time i devoured a novel in one sitting; certainly not since childhood. i hope to spend many of my august days this same way <3

[ladyniniane]

D'autres personnes ici qui font le pumpkin autumn challenge 👀 ? Je serais ravie de voir vos listes et de discuter un peu lecture !

(Liste des livres sous la coupe)

-Roman de ronce et d'épine, Lucie Baratte

-Le bracelet de jade, Mu Ming,

-The city of glass, Nghi Vo

-La Première-Née, Amy Harmon (déjà lu)

-The teller of small fortunes, Julie Leong

-La morelle noire, Teresa Moure

-Arte 19, Kei Okhubo

-Ceux qui changent et ceux qui meurent, Barbara Comyns

-La maîtresse des ombres, Eric Bony

-Les possédées, Johanna Van Veen

-The chatelaine, Kate Heartfield

-We who are about to..., Joanna Russ

[virgin-martyr]

Book Recommendations

If You Like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, You Should Try… The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyn’s O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi  When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill My Sweet Audrina by VC Andrews

If You Like Anne Carson, You Should Try… These Possible Lives by Fleur Jaeggy Waiting for God by Simone Weil Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz Bluets by Maggie Nelson

American Gothic + Girlhood  Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Logic by Olympia Vernon Heaven by VC Andrews Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn  The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

Female Friendship — Obsessive, Brutal, Erotic Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy  When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan La Fanu 

Female Mysticism Matrix by Lauren Groff City of Incurable Women by Maud Casey From Virile Woman to WomanChrist by Barbara Newman The Female Mystic by Andrea Janelle Dickens Maps of Flesh and Light edit. by Ulrike Wiethaus

On Excess and Asceticism Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind  The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Holy Feast and Holy Fast by Caroline Bynum 

If You Like The Haunting of Hill House, You Should Try… White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi  The Turn of the Screw by Henry James Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews Dark Places by Gillian Flynn Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Antinatalism — Against Being Born We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver  Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Tess of d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy The Trouble with Being Born by Emil M. Cioran Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky 

[discoevsky]

you seem like a person with fantastic taste in books so I would love to know your favorite (I'll cheat and say non LMM) ones. Signed, curious and ready to read.

You don’t know how long I’ve waited for someone to ask me this. These are only a handful and I tried to keep it varied to give you different options based on your interests. Hopefully I didn’t scare you off 😅

Fiction:

The Leviathan Series by Scott Westerfeld (the audio is superb)

Emma - Jane Austen

Deerskin - Robin Mckinley

Chalice - Robin Mckinley

Rapunzel’s Revenge - Shannon Hale

The Ramona Quimby series - Beverly Cleary (the audio books are superb)

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

The Raging Quiet - Sherryl Jordan

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

Our Spoon Came from Woolworths - Barbara Comyns

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

No longer Human - Osamu Dazai

Crackpot - Adele Wiseman

Twelve Angry Men - Reginald Rose

The Dark Road - Ma Jian

Small Beauty - Jia quing wilson-lang

Green Grass, Running Water - Thomas King

Sula - Toni Morison

Song of Solomon - Toni Morison

Nonfiction:

The Soul of an Octopus - Sy Montgomery

Gathering Moss - robin Wall Kimmerer

Toto-chan: the little girl at the window - Tetsyko Kuroyanagi

Pirate Woman - Laura Sook Duncombe

[devoutjunk]

this weekend:

maybe found a wedding photographer

finished Barbara Comyns’ phenomenal Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (like an eerie English pastoral cross of Shirley Jackson and Dorothy Sayers w/ its own dark humor—please go read it now (as a bonus you get to support Dorothy, who are stellar): https://dorothyproject.com/book/barbara-comynss-who-was-changed-and-who-was-dead/

typed up/edited new outline for this draft of the novel (lol) (maybe this one will stick)

submitted two short stories (def to publications that are a reach but it could happen!)

finally watched The Talented Mr. Ripley which, predictably, slapped (need to pick up some Highsmith at work to read when I have a chance!)

started Le Guin’s Worlds of Exile and Illusion

Still need to:

Go to barre

work on actual novel draft—maybe start drafting Anna & Aemon scene? Or go through what’s down already and revise/polish based on new outline. New Creon scene may need to be rewritten & new Isne and Anna scene still is rough (revising towards new outline may address both of these tho)

read more Le Guin if in the mood later or maybe start something else as well? (another Ngaio Marsh maybe or Strange Beasts of China)

watch something w/ max?

Talk to mom about florist stuff

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Sisters by a River | Author: Barbara Comyns | Publisher: Virago (2013)

[clementinefight]

cold summer

My stress this summer is so bad, my neck is permanently stiff. Rigid, nervous, stone. A girl wakes in the middle of the night, she's alone in a deep world of empty houses, and in the dispossessed sleep of her childhood branches have started to grow from her arms, limp orange muddy leaves have overcome her hair, and she is rooting from toes down into floorboards. Nobody to ask a thing, like whether or not her experience of life is normal. So the branches grow, gather, then she is this isolated nature in her isolated bedroom, turned over to a cyclical light of day or night she sees only through gaps in her own weather, and so big with bushiness she can’t get out the manufactured door and enter the wood where, unbeknownst to her, are the others just like her, made of branches and leaves and who have solitary spirits also, though still need their roots to touch the roots of another. Or something. Sometimes, and I’m not proud of this, I look out at the green backyard and I see the peach-juice sun in the sky and I see the invisible breezes of July curling with tendrils of dark flora and it seems not like I'm here, but like I’m watching television, something bright and far away. I forget it’s my day, that I can even go over there and touch if I wanted to, I could even pee on the land like a dog would, if I wanted to, and claim this in some way.

Haven’t swam enough, haven’t walked enough, I’m becoming a little suburbanite cruising around in my dented car, seeing everything through eyes of windshield. The bushes, the houses, the pink sinking light—it’s all over there, and nothing is here but the music. This puts a strange layer of distance between me and summer, me and real things. I will make a point later to stick my toe in some mud – or press my bare hand into black pavement, will the asphalt to deflate like it’s a hot chocolate cake. Wouldn’t you like for the parking lots to liquify and sink below ground every summer, and for the black waves to rock our heat glistened cars around, up towards the marshmallow clouds; or for the greenery to not stop where it stops but extend until it’s like a shag of shining lime hair over the shopping mall, the movie theatre. If you don’t have a car, good for you, stay pure

Something else I’ve noticed — I’m such an impulse buyer. Buying feels close and friendly, like putting on some leather gloves. I would never want to see me at an auction. Stressed, my emotions lift to a crescendo where they then collapse from jitters into an almost hysterical net around my entire body—a pantsuit of stress, and it’s three colours: blue, red and purple, the baby. Feels warm, then cold. Here I either go to the grocery store to buy new condiments, shortbread, or jarred vegetables in brine or oil; or I’ll buy books online.

Today it was books. A small NYRB haul. I guess this is a fairly tame impulse, but I’d really rather be that one who stresses out and goes for a walk, or a swim, or a bike ride, or a scream into their pillow. Instead I just fill my cart, and it’s like filling a hole for a little while. Hate my methods. Look forward to the books. The Liar by Martin A. Hansen (“and for years now Johannes has lived alone”), My Friends by Emmanuel Bove, Machines in the Head by Anna Kavan and The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns. I’m drawn to stories with the desperate or resigned thud of loneliness in them; it’s what I relate to most; or maybe it’s not; it’s funny, even when people reach out for connection, I still want to believe it’s being alone I’m most capable of, even made for (I say that in a soldierly way, which makes it even more embarrassing). Björk was in a movie called The Juniper Tree, which was inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale as was the novel by Comyns. Maybe I’ll read that too.

Today I’m in Montreal. I'm visiting my little brother. His balcony looks out onto other nondescript buildings, and he leaves the door wide open while he naps and I work on my laptop out here on the couch; trucks and cars roar a kind of grating metal noise down below, this noise feels prehistoric rather than modern, like out of sight the earth has split under lava and now we are getting not the sight but the noise, the noise. I decide to welcome it. The noise is not a fixed feature of my life anyway, but of his life, in this way it’s easy to welcome. Brief everything. Brief and body me. Bonobo plays on the television, then Seabear, and last night we watched some episodes of King of the Hill—the tornado episode had some beautiful red and green skies. My coffee this morning brought on nausea and I thought I could wave this dislocation off by eating a raisin croissant, but that made it worse, though at least it was good. Now I sit here with a foggy head taking forever to get my work done. EEEEEK

Later going to meet my brother’s girlfriend for the first time over some ramen! Then going to see the 10:15 show Oppenheimer with both of them, all three of us together.

In two weeks I leave for my trip! Ireland, Scotland, London, Iceland!