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Loading... Who was Changed and Who was Deadby Barbara Comyns
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  Porius | Jun 13, 2009 |  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. (  )1  lahochstetler | Feb 9, 2009 | 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." (  )3 Ganeshaka | Jan 24, 2009 | 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. ( )5 Talbin | Oct 29, 2008 | This slim book, set in the English countryside in the teens, was banned for indecency when it was first published in 1954. Comyns tackles madness, illness, suicide, adultery, mob violence and monstrous relatives with meticulous attention to detail, concise and dead-on character sketches, and good humor and optimism. 2 smfmpls | Nov 29, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
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Wikipedia in English
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. (