SISTERS BY A RIVER by Barbara Comyns

Barbara Comyns is having a bit of a renaissance. Her name gets bandied about with increasing frequency and, just recently, a feature in The Independent crowned her the greatest English novelist you’ve never read. It was enough to pique my interest so I picked up her 1947 debut, which just happened to be a novella.

At first, I was unconvinced. Sisters By a River starts off as a cozy country bildungsroman, a strongly autobiographical tale of a girl called Barbara who, along with her five sisters, grows up on a farm in a quaint village. It’s sweet and lightly amusing but… Meh. Then the dark clouds roll in. Pets get tortured. Episodes of violent abuse begin to dot the narrative. There is squalor. Possession are sold off. For all her sweet observations, Barbara’s family is falling to pieces.

Sisters By a River takes a sledgehammer to the rural idyll. It is also a witty, sustained critique of gender inequality and educational opportunities (the prose is brilliantly laden with errors). I’m too early into my Comyns reading to know if she’s the greatest English novelist I’d never read but, based on this debut, she just might be.

Sisters By A River by Barbara Comyns
Virago Modern Classics, 2013 (First pub. 1947)
198 pages