Kim McNeill •📚🌿☕️

Thank you!!! The cheapest copy I can find is $200.😳 I checked this morning & I can get it on interlibrary loan, but I really want my own copy. Have you read it?

Yes, please! 🧙 Such a great conversation!!!

🎉🎉🎉🥳

I never realized that until I read that today. So cool!

Cover of BARBARA COMYNS: A SAVAGE INNOCENCE by Avril Horner (Manchester University Press)

Now reading.

🥰 Barbara Comyns is an excellent antidote to the state of our world right now!

🎉🎉🎉🥳

Cover of I USED TO BE CHARMING: THE REST OF EVE BABITZ (NYRB Classics)

Photo of Eve Babitz taken by Mirandi Babitz

#NYRBWomen25 Who's ready to read some more Eve Babitz?!! Starting Thursday!

"gathers nearly 50 pieces written between 1975 and 1997, including the full text of Babitz’s wry book-length investigation into the pioneering lifestyle brand Fiorucci"

I'll post the page guide tomorrow. :)

Gorgeous!!!! 💛

It's so good!

Hey, @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social, can you please republish this??!! 🙏

Thank you, Valarie! It’s been awhile since I listened to this one. I just added it to my queue for a re-listen. 🤗

Excellent thread. Here's the Backlisted episode on Comyns as well: www.backlisted.fm/episodes/14-...

Now streaming.

Episode 75: Barbara Comyns with Nora (@pear.jelly)

And finally, I re-listened to this lovely episode with @mookse.bsky.social @bibliopaul.bsky.social & @pear-jelly.bsky.social #NYRBWomen25
mookse.substack.com/p/episode-75...

Barbara Comyns’s Inescapable Novel “The Juniper Tree” Read in a present-day civic life that unfolds like a series of old fairy tales, Comyns’s modern retelling of the Brothers Grimm classic is gripping and prescient.

“Comyns is expert at depicting how much of life happens as if by accident—buying a sofa, going on a journey, having a child, entering a marriage—but is equally adept at depicting the siren call of bad choices and misfortune.” #NYRBWomen25
www.newyorker.com/books/second...

The Literary Outsider: How Barbara Comyns Wrote Her Way to The Juniper Tree The work of Barbara Comyns always felt like a secret, as if she were writing, speaking only to me. A literary outsider, Comyns had almost no formal training in writing, and didn’t publish her first…

“She variously employs the conventions of a gothic novel, a (bewildering) family portrait, a bathetic melodrama, and a fairy tale gone wrong, but what seems to be most dynamic and formally significant in her novels is her use of voice.” #NYRBWomen25
lithub.com/the-literary...

The Improbable and Impervious in Barbara Comyns’s “The Juniper Tree” | Los Angeles Review of Books Anna E. Clark unearths the fairy-tale force of “The Juniper Tree,” a late-career novel by Barbara Comyns.

“Barbara Comyns is a good novelist to read when the world stops making sense. […] Bella Winter, has a life that is equal parts naturalism, soap opera, and Dickensian fable.” #NYRBWomen25
lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

“[Graham Greene] became her friend, mentor and critic; he had faith in her work when she was unknown and advanced her career whenever he could. Their friendship and their correspondence lasted for over forty years” #NYRBWomen25
www.the-tls.com/literature-b...

A more in-depth piece by Lucy Scholes on the forgotten genius of Barbara Comyns, originally published on Emily Books. #NYRBWomen25
midcoastseniorcollege.org/wp-content/u...

Re-Covered: Barbara Comyns by Lucy Scholes July 14, 2021 – With eight of her eleven books now back in print, does Barbara Comyns even qualify as a neglected author anymore?

“When I’m asked how I first became interested in out-of-print and forgotten books, my answer is always the same: it all began with Barbara Comyns.” — Lucy Scholes #NYRBWomen25
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/07...

The magnificent unreality of Barbara Comyns Her readership is devoted but small, and not all her novels are in print, but, once read, Barbara Comyns is never forgotten.

A few articles of interest about Comyns…

“Through an affair with the painter Rupert Lee, [Comyns] became involved with the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition, and befriended the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington” #NYRBWomen25
engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

Illustration by Maurice Sendak

Illustration by Walter Crane, 1882

Illustration by Louis R. Head

Illustration by Andrea Dezsö

Listening to the fairy tale led me to look up some of its illustrations. #NYRBWomen25

The Juniper Tree

The novel echoes the rather dark 1812 Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name. This is an excellent reading & hearing the tale makes reading her novel even more unsettling. #NYRBWomen25 open.spotify.com/episode/1cHF...

Barbara Comyns and her daughter, Caroline, circa 1937

Barbara Comyns later in life

#NYRBWomen25 I finished THE JUNIPER TREE this morning, Barbara Comyns’s final novel published when she was 77yo. It’s everything I love about her writing. Here are a few rabbit holes I went down while reading this enchanting retelling.

I’m reading the Ravn now & liking it a lot. I also highly recommend the latest Between the Covers if you haven’t already listened.

I loved her Teresa Wilms Montt translations. I need to read some of her writing!

No Seattle. 😭 I can’t wait to read this!

Thank you, Brian! It’s such a beautiful book & I’m so fascinated by her & her mountaineering.

I haven’t seen it so I added it to my list. It sounds great!