Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara…

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (original 1950; edition 2015)

by Barbara Comyns (Author), Emily Gould (Introduction)

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"I told Helen my story and she went home and cried" begins Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. But Barbara Comyns's beguiling novel is far from maudlin, despite the ostensibly harrowing ordeals its heroine endures. Sophia is twenty-one when she marries fellow artist Charles, and she seems to have nearly as much affection for her pet newt as she does for her husband. Her housekeeping knowledge is lacking (everything she cooks tastes of soap) and she attributes her morning sickness to a bad batch of strawberries. England is in the middle of the Great Depression, and in any case, the money Sophia earns at her occasional modeling gigs are not enough to make up for her husband's lack of interest in keeping the heat on. Predictably, the marriage begins to falter; not so predictably, Sophia's optimistic guilelessness is the very thing responsible for turning her life around"--… (more)

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Member:	holmes111
Title:	Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
Authors:	Barbara Comyns (Author)
Other authors:	Emily Gould (Introduction)
Info:	NYRB Classics (2015), 224 pages
Collections:	Your library
Rating:
Tags:	fiction, English

Work Information

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns (1950)

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Showing 1-5 of 27 (next | show all)

Rather like being read to by a four year old. The characters were flat, and I could not bring myself to care about what happened to them, no matter how hard I tried. At least it is behind me. (

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kent23124 | May 19, 2023 |

This writer, a Brit, is a new one for me, as is the case with many of us as our new feminist awareness is putting many literary women back in the forefront of a domain that previously ignored them. Our primary character herein, one Sophia, is a naive but apparently attractive young woman (I say this as she is constantly being 'rescued' by reprobates) who finds herself enmeshed in a horrific mariage, terrible in-laws and a laggard husband (aren't they all -- and let's not forget the 'manolescent' boyfriends of today, a plague upon the land!), a pregnancy and delivery from hell (thirties style!), and the class-ridden society of class conscious pre-war Britain. I intend to read more works from B Comyns, a true luminary! (

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larryking1 | Nov 2, 2019 |

In this mostly depressing novel, a young woman recounts her early adulthood. She married way too young and had a baby right away, lived in poverty, gets ill, husband is unsupportive and leaves her, etc. It was sort of like a first person Hardy novel set in the mid-1900s.

I liked it, but not as much as the other Comyns novel I've read (The Vet's Daughter). I mainly liked the voice of the narrator in this one. She is very straightforward and matter of fact about all the terrible things happening to her. I actually found it sort of funny at times. (

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japaul22 | Jul 4, 2019 |

Interesting. Author Barbara Comyns writes a semi-autobiographical novel set in the 1930s (she cautions that nothing in the book is true except a few chapters; I won’t mention what those are about to avoid spoilers). The protagonist, Sophia, marries in haste and repents at leisure; she’s breathtakingly naïve, and her husband is a callous jerk – but can be slightly forgiven because he’s also breathtakingly naïve. The couple have no idea of how to support themselves, and unfortunately don’t seem to realize how reproduction works (Sophia volunteers to the reader that she thought if you firmly believed you wouldn’t get pregnant, you wouldn’t. This turns out not to be the case). The main charm of the book is the writing style; simple declarative sentences narrating their descent into genteel poverty – and continuing into pretty ungenteel poverty – somehow turns the commonplace into grand tragedy. Still, Sophia manages to muddle through being unable to afford clothes and furniture and heat and food and medical care and ends up reminding the reader that simple joys – enough to eat, a new pair of shoes, a pet – are the best. (

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setnahkt | Mar 21, 2019 |

A vivid, melancholy and poetic novel about poverty in mid-20th century England by a woman who is quickly becoming my favourite new writer (new to me, I mean). This is pitched somewhere between the quirky, self-conscious voice of a Muriel Spark protagonist and the depictions of working class life from one of Orwell's social novels, maybe Keep The Aspidistra Flying or one of those. Comyns should be much better-known than she is. (

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haarpsichord | Nov 5, 2018 |

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Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Comyns, Barbara	—	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Brayfield, Celia	Introduction	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Gould, Emily	Introduction	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Holden, Ursula	Introduction	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
O'Farrell, Maggie	Introduction	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Spencer, Stanley	Cover artist	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

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New York Review Books Classics

Virago Modern Classics (109)

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Canonical title

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

Original title

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

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Original publication date

People/Characters

Important places

Birmingham, England, UK

Bedfordshire, England, UK

St. John's Wood, London, England, UK

Important events

Related movies

Epigraph

Dedication

First words

Introduction
Barbara Comyns wrote first as a child, to amuse herself, her vibrant and curious imagination overflowing the edges of reality.

I told Helen my story and she went home and cried.

Quotations

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Greene, Graham

Saunders, Kate

Original language

English

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Canonical LCC

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Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

▾Book descriptions

"I told Helen my story and she went home and cried" begins Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. But Barbara Comyns's beguiling novel is far from maudlin, despite the ostensibly harrowing ordeals its heroine endures. Sophia is twenty-one when she marries fellow artist Charles, and she seems to have nearly as much affection for her pet newt as she does for her husband. Her housekeeping knowledge is lacking (everything she cooks tastes of soap) and she attributes her morning sickness to a bad batch of strawberries. England is in the middle of the Great Depression, and in any case, the money Sophia earns at her occasional modeling gigs are not enough to make up for her husband's lack of interest in keeping the heat on. Predictably, the marriage begins to falter; not so predictably, Sophia's optimistic guilelessness is the very thing responsible for turning her life around"--

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"Eventually, we bought a mattress and were able to tuck the clothes in the and the sheets were washed and didn't smell and we became proper married people." Sophia is twenty-one years old, she carries a newt around in her pocket and marries - in haste - a young artist called Charles. Swept into bohemian London of the thirties, Sophia is ill-equipped to cope: poverty, babies (however much loved) - and her husband - conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophie takes up with the dismal, aging art critic, Peregrine and learns to repent her marriage - and affair - at leisure. Repentance brings an abrupt end to a life of unpaid bills, unsold pictures and unwashed crockery, plus the hope of joys in store: this novel has a very happy ending... Barbara Comyns was born at Bidford-on-Avon and now lives in Richmond, Surrey. The author of eight wonderfully eccentric novels, this, her second, first published 1950, takes a tragic-comic look at artistic life in London before the Second World War through the child-like eyes of the endearing, ebullient Sophia. (From the back cover of Virago Press's edition published in 1983. Barbara Comyns died in 1992.)

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