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    Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
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    Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
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    Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
    Ebook145 pages2 hours

    Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

    By Barbara Comyns and Brian Evenson

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    About this ebook

    “Comyns’ novel is deranged in ways that shouldn’t be disclosed.” —Ben Marcus

    This is the story of the Willoweed family and the English village in which they live. It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room windows, “quacking their approval” as they sail around the room. “What about my rose beds?” demands Grandmother Willoweed. Her son shouts down her ear-trumpet that the garden is submerged, dead animals everywhere, she will be lucky to get a bunch. Then the miller drowns himself . . . then the butcher slits his throat . . . and a series of gruesome deaths plagues the villagers. The newspaper asks, “Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?” Through it all, Comyns' unique voice weaves a text as wonderful as it is horrible, as beautiful as it is cruel. Originally published in England in 1954, this “overlooked small masterpiece” is a twisted, tragicomic gem.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDorothy, a publishing project
    Release dateNov 1, 2010
    ISBN9780989760799
    Author

    Barbara Comyns

    Barbara Comyns was born in England in 1909. She and her siblings were brought up by governesses, and allowed to run wild. She wrote eleven books including Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead,Sisters by a River, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths and The Vet's Daughter. To support her family, she worked a variety of jobs over the course of her life, including dealing in antiques and vintage cars, renovating apartments, and breeding poodles. She was an accomplished painter, and exhibited with The London Group. She died in 1992.

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    Reviews for Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

    4/5

    141 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Thank You This Is Very Good, Maybe This Can Help You ----- Download Full Ebook Very Detail Here ---- https://amzn.to/3XOf46C ---- - You Can See Full Book/ebook Offline Any Time - You Can Read All Important Knowledge Here - You Can Become A Master In Your Business
    • 3/5
      Published at the time of COVID 19 as its main theme is some kind of plague that wipes out many people in a village. Rye bread is blamed. The whole plot is mad and revolves around an eccentric family. The humour can be described as dark and in some cases daft.
    • 4/5
      Such a strange and wonderful little novel.
    • 4/5
      Funny and grotesque, this novel reads like a British version of Southern Gothic.
    • 4/5
      A quirky book about a family--a detestable grandmother, her self-centered son, his three children by a dead wife (one of whom, his favorite, is actually not his), an old caretaker, and two young maids--living in an English village, which experiences first a flood and then a rash of poisonings causing hallucinations and various bizarre deaths. Comyns has an understated writing style, and there is a wicked dark humor underlying her writing that I quite enjoyed. However, I agree with some reviewers that there didn't seem to be much point to this, other than telling a wickedly horrific story just for its own sake. I found it light but enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      An odd book, commendably short and very well written, felt a bit old fashioned even for it's time (1954). I guess it is Cold Comfort Farm and Gormenghast combined.
    • 4/5
      This book begins as follows:

      "The ducks swam through the drawing room windows. 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 world that had come during the night."

      This phrase sets the tone for the book: the juxtaposition of the horrific--the flood--and the whimsical and charming--ducks swimming in the drawing room! An image of swans, and then a squealing pig, "tearing at his throat, which was red and bleeding." The maids laughing in the kitchen, chasing a floating basket of eggs, then " the last of the peacocks scrambling for the roof, the others had drowned. The hens committing suicide in the dank water."

      The actual plot is similar. The three children lead a seemingly idyllic life, yet their selfish and slothful father, and egomaniac and controlling grandmother lurk in the background, as does a mysterious ailment striking the villagers dead.

      This was a wonderful book. I read a few other books by Barbara Comyns in the 1970s/80s, (Sisters by a River, The Juniper Tree, and The Vet's Daughter, and as I recall they were similarly unique.
    • 3/5
      A gruesome little story about a town gone mad in the aftermath of a flood. It has moments of brilliant black comedy, but the overall tone is not humorous. I kept making comparisons to We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I found more appealing; I Capture the Castle, for reasons I haven't explored much; and, of course, Cold Comfort Farm, which was so much more good-natured in its send-up of idyllic country living. Some things come out right in the end, but I found that slightly dissatisfying after the barrage of horrors and losses. "Quirky" is a word often applied to this novel by reviewers, and it certainly is fitting. Perhaps I don't properly appreciate this particular brand of quirkiness, but I have to say I don't quite get the point here.
    • 5/5
      This book belongs on the shelf next to "Let's Murder Uncle," "I Capture the Castle," and of course, that famous gem of odd goings on in the British countryside, "Cold Comfort Farm."

      However, be aware that Comyns tragicomic little gem is dipped in a blacker hue than any of the previously mentioned books. Originally banned in Ireland for it's singularly bleak vision, "Who was Changed..." begins with a flood, goes on to a mysterious string of violent deaths brought on by good intentions (possibly the only good intentions in the book), and ends with a funeral.

      The novel's three children are wonderfully and sympathetically limned as they try to make their way through a crazy adult world. The evil grandmother and inept father are both hilarious and monstrous. And one can only pity the feckless servants.

      Written in a clear, unflinching prose that's peculiarly beautiful, "Who was changed and who was dead" is an uncomfortable vision of country life that makes me very glad to live in a city.
    • 4/5
      If Jane Austen had had a morbid sense of humor, she might have written something like Who was Changed and Who was Dead. Although I have only read this single work by Comyns, she seems to share Austen's ability to create both sympathetic characters and absurd ones with homely details of dress, action, and gossip. Both authors are extremely aware of social class and mores, but are willing to challenge them with unexpected romances. And each focuses on a very small setting, an English village, and more particularly, a single family. But there the similarities end, and one might better compare Comyns work with Gogol's fantastic realism.

      Grandmother Willoweed is a tyrant. She rules her middle-aged son, the household, and, when possible, the village, with an iron hand. Hard of hearing, her ear trumpet serves as a symbol of her character: loud and forceful, yet unable or unwilling to understand what others are saying. Her son, Ebin, is a sorry character lacking the backbone to stand up to his mother and financially dependent upon her ever since he lost his job as a gossip columnist due to a libel suit. Ebin has three children: Emma, the handsome, hardworking heroine; Dennis, his sensitive son; and Hattie, the child who is proof that he was cuckolded at least once. Added to the family cast of characters is Old Ives the gardener and two maids, both looking for love, but in very different places.

      The story begins with a flood that has swept through the town killing many of the animals and livestock. In a series of farcical scenes, we see how each of the characters reacts to the damage caused by the flood. Shortly after the flood recedes, a mysterious illness plagues the village, and Grandmother is in a tizzy to know who has died. The deceased all seem to have gone mad before succumbing, and Ebin smells a story. Taking advantage of his neighbors' distress, he begins to write news stories about the disasters and tries to regain some sense of independence. Meanwhile, love beckons to Emma and the maids.

      Ranging from macabre to hilarious, when first published in 1954, the book was banned in Ireland for its indecent unpleasantness. I enjoyed the book for its eccentric characters and bizarre comedy. Recommended for those seeking a more unusual read.
    • 5/5
      Barbara Comyns is an author who should be better known. What a strange style she has, combining death and life, sunlight and mud in every scene. The lazy, self centered father - so proud of his soft hands - reminds me of another character in literature, but I can't remember who. He has three children: Emma, the competent one expected to be the mother of the family; Hattie the happy, fun dark one, everyone's favorite (for the life of him he can't figure out where in their little village his wife found a black man with whom to have an affair), and poor put upon "cissy" Dennis, dreamy, fragile and the ready recipient of all his father's bullying. He has an evil toad of a mother (with a forked tongue no less) whose only joy in life is to be feared, respected and fed and who delights in seeing the unhappiness of everyone around her. There's also the gentlest of mass murderers.

      I recommend this book to anyone wanting to be sucked in to an unfamiliar and engaging style. Oh, and the book cover with a detail from a painting by Stanley Spencer Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Dinner on the Hotel Lawn is the most perfect cover for a book I've ever seen.

      I thought of Robert Frost throughout the reading of the book:

      Design (1936)
      Robert Frost

      I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
      On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
      Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
      Assorted characters of death and blight
      Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
      Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
      A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
      And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

      What had that flower to do with being white,
      The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
      What brought the kindred spider to that height,
      Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
      What but design of darkness to appall?—
      If design govern in a thing so small.
    • 5/5
      "The ducks swam though the drawing-room window"

      So starts one of the most delightfully oddest books I have ever read. A story of the moneyed Willoweed Family that begins in a flood and is soon caught in horrific tragedy as a fatal madness rips through their small village. Yet this is not horror but darkly funny surreal tale, told with a child like joy; how wonderful life can be but also how cruel.

      The style is at first disconcerting, words tumble about like the flood they describe, but very soon it eases and the story becomes a joy to read: full of beautiful quirky descriptions and odd asides. We follow the story from a multitude of view points, which is never confusing and seems the most natural thing in the world. In fact natural is a good word for this book even though it's very surreal. Plans go awry and life gets in the way. Lessons are not always learned and amongst the happy endings there are awful ones.

      It maybe a short novel but it packs a punch. Highly recommended to just about anyone
    • 4/5
      Barbara Comyns has a fine imagination. I enjoyed this book, which was very warm and full of humor and quirks, despite the gruesome deaths.
    • 5/5
      Barbara Comyns casts a cold eye, indeed.
      As soon as the funeral was over, and before the mourners had hardly left, the uninvited surged into the churchyard to watch the gravedigger fill the grave with the clods of clay so recently removed and to examine the dying wreaths. They were accompanied by many dogs.
      But this master is making me garrulous. Read her; and hear the chimes at noon. Listen closely.
    • 4/5
      This is an utterly bizarre and tremendously enjoyable read. This novel follows a summer in the lives of professional idler Ebin Willoweed and his family: the perennially unhappy and tyrannical Grandmother Willoweed, the family servants, and Ebin's three children, including the daughter who is clearly the product of her mother's affair, as she is half black, and Ebin Willoweed is not. One might think that this forms the storyline, but it does not. Hattie Willoweed is completely accepted by family and community. Her mother's infidelity adds a layer to the already dysfunctional antics of the Willoweeds. The real story is miserable plague, which follows close on the heels of a flood. As villagers become horribly ill then committ suicide in fits of fury, it becomes clear that something strange is afflicting the town. Comyns recounts for us what happens to the undeniably bizarre Willoweeds in a bizarre set of circumstances. The consequences are bittersweet and surprising. I stayed up late reading this book- it really kept my attention, and I read it all in one sitting.
    • 5/5
      Barbara Comyns is more fun than a blackbird pie! In Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, she sketches a picture of a small English village with all the warm fuzzy detail of a Beatrix Potter. She brings the very dysfunctional grand-matriarchal Willoweed family to life with the same kind of zany dialogue and deft storytelling that characterizes Garrison Keillor's news from Lake Wobegon. And, like a Grim Reaper with Quentin Tarantino's sense of style and shock, she runs a scythe through the village in the form of an ergot poisoning epidemic. A very wry rye sense of humor, indeed. There are distinct echoes in the story of her first novel, Sisters By A River, but that's not a complaint. It's more like remarking that Johnny B. Goode sounds a bit like Roll Over Beethoven.

      Barbara Comyns will take a place in your heart, like, um,...well like a dead goat?

      "With their wicker baskets under their arms, Norah and Eunice ran away from Willoweed House. Eunice went to Roary Court, where she was petted and fussed over by the two old ladies and quite soon had taken the place in their hearts that had once been occupied by their dead goat."
    • 4/5
      Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, by Barbara Comyns, is an odd but affecting little book. Ebin Willoweed and his children live with his mother, the abusive and domineering Grandmother Willoweed. They are the "grand family" of the village, and everyone lives in fear of the older Mrs. Willoweed. The novel begins with an epic flood, which is followed by a disease that drives the villagers mad. Yet as bleak as this sounds, several of the Willoweeds are changed (as the title states) for the good.

      This is a difficult novel to classify. The characters are odd. The plot is strange. There are several humorous situations which are immediately followed by macabre scenes - floating dead animals or a man slitting his own throat. It is a very deadpan novel. In the end, this book is probably not for everyone. I really enjoyed the juxtapositions, but for people used to more "traditional" fiction, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead may be a little much.