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The Skin Chairs
"Could I see the chairs, please?" ..."Chairs, chairs. What does the child mean?" ..."Oh, she means the chairs in your hall, the ones your husband had covered with skin. I'm afraid she is a morbid little thing." She giggled and bounced about on her rickety chair.
Her father dies and the ten-year-old Frances, her mother and assorted siblings are taken under the wing of their horsey relations, led by bullying Aunt Lawrence. Their new home is small and they can't afford a maid. Mother occasionally dabs at the furniture with a duster and sister Polly rules the kitchen. Living in patronised poverty isn't much fun but Frances makes friends with Mrs Alexander who has a collection of monkeys and a yellow motor car, and the young widow, Vanda, who is friendly if the Major isn't due to call. But times do change and one day Aunt Lawrence gets her come-uppance and Frances goes to live in the house with 'the skin chairs'.
First published in 1962, this quirky novel describing the adult world with a young girl's eye, resounds with Barbara Comyn's original voice.
Her father dies and the ten-year-old Frances, her mother and assorted siblings are taken under the wing of their horsey relations, led by bullying Aunt Lawrence. Their new home is small and they can't afford a maid. Mother occasionally dabs at the furniture with a duster and sister Polly rules the kitchen. Living in patronised poverty isn't much fun but Frances makes friends with Mrs Alexander who has a collection of monkeys and a yellow motor car, and the young widow, Vanda, who is friendly if the Major isn't due to call. But times do change and one day Aunt Lawrence gets her come-uppance and Frances goes to live in the house with 'the skin chairs'.
First published in 1962, this quirky novel describing the adult world with a young girl's eye, resounds with Barbara Comyn's original voice.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
About the author
Barbara Comyns
11 books212 followersBarbara Comyns was educated mainly by governesses until she went to art schools in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. Her father was a semi-retired managing director of a Midland chemical firm. She was one of six children and they lived in a house on the banks of the Avon in Warwickshire. She started writing fiction at the age of ten and her first novel, Sisters by a River, was published in 1947. She also worked in an advertising agency, a typewriting bureau, dealt in old cars and antique furniture, bred poodles, converted and let flats, and exhibited pictures in The London Group. She first married in 1931, to an artist, and for the second time in 1945. With her second husband she lived in Spain for eighteen years.
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March 19, 2019After the wonderful absurdity of Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, I expected more of the same from The Skin Chairs, especially given the weirdness implied by the skin chairs of the title. And the chairs did live up to their promise; they were perfectly and horribly weird. They also served to link the various parts of what was otherwise a rather fragmented story. The same could be said for Who was Changed... but that story got away with being fragmentary — things and people floated in and out of it because much of it concerned things that floated in any case.
The Skin Chairs, on the other hand, is a more conventional kind of story, and the various bits of plot reminded me very much of Jane Austen's novels, Mansfield Park, in particular, with a dash of Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice thrown in, rounded off with a few Northanger Abbey-type gothic touches — the chairs, for instance, and the fearsome General who brought them back from the colonies. And why not throw Emma into the mix too, there are foolish characters aplenty in this book. Though having mentioned five out of Austen’s six novels, I feel bad that I haven't found a way to work in the sixth.
Back to the book in hand. Unlike Jane Austen, Barbara Comyns uses a first person narrator in this story, so the only view we get of the characters and events is through the eyes of ten year-old Frances — which perhaps explains the fragmentary nature of the story. Her perspective on the world is a nice blend of the innocent and the precocious, and Comyns captures very well the way children can sometimes have an entire alternative reality going on in their imaginations. Also, how they can be very astute judges of adults in spite of not fully understanding adult motivations. Although, it has to be said, Frances is particularly severe in her judgements, and many of the people in her world could find their counterparts in the nastier and more boastful characters from Jane Austen’s novels.
And now that the word ‘boastful’ has occurred to me, I’m reminded of Sir Walter Eliot in Persuasion. I'm glad I got to mention my favourite Austen novel in the end.
The Skin Chairs, on the other hand, is a more conventional kind of story, and the various bits of plot reminded me very much of Jane Austen's novels, Mansfield Park, in particular, with a dash of Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice thrown in, rounded off with a few Northanger Abbey-type gothic touches — the chairs, for instance, and the fearsome General who brought them back from the colonies. And why not throw Emma into the mix too, there are foolish characters aplenty in this book. Though having mentioned five out of Austen’s six novels, I feel bad that I haven't found a way to work in the sixth.
Back to the book in hand. Unlike Jane Austen, Barbara Comyns uses a first person narrator in this story, so the only view we get of the characters and events is through the eyes of ten year-old Frances — which perhaps explains the fragmentary nature of the story. Her perspective on the world is a nice blend of the innocent and the precocious, and Comyns captures very well the way children can sometimes have an entire alternative reality going on in their imaginations. Also, how they can be very astute judges of adults in spite of not fully understanding adult motivations. Although, it has to be said, Frances is particularly severe in her judgements, and many of the people in her world could find their counterparts in the nastier and more boastful characters from Jane Austen’s novels.
And now that the word ‘boastful’ has occurred to me, I’m reminded of Sir Walter Eliot in Persuasion. I'm glad I got to mention my favourite Austen novel in the end.
November 30, 2022
I'm halfway through The Skin Chairs and my trust in Barbara Comyns is near total. I'm not sure I can describe this book, which on the surface is anything but experimental, but I've never read anything like it. I mean, on one level, sure, there's plenty like it. It's the story of growing up in an English village in the early part of the twentieth century, and yes, on the literal level, the back-cover blurb is accurate: it's a 'quirky novel describing the adult world with a young girl's eye'. But what an eye! It misses nothing. Page for page, line for line, I doubt there is a denser writer than Barbara Comyns in terms of sheer detail, or at least no denser writer who retains her naturalness. It's – quietly – mindblowing. Every line speaks of the real, the tangible. Never does she wander into abstractions, yet the spiritual, the intangible, are always present.
It's tempting to think that so much detail could only be autobiographical, but if so it's hard to imagine how Barbara Comyns could have stored enough recollections to pull off this feat more than once – and the introduction informs us that this is not an autobiographical novel ('Only the skin chairs are true, I saw them,' said Comyns). Also impressive is the tightrope-walker's sense of balance implicit in this writing: never does it collapse, nor even threaten to, under its weight of detail; always character, emotion, instinct and plot co-exist in harmony. Things happen – simultaneous plotlines, interactions of characters on many levels, developments in the village – and little Frances notes it all, with just enough naivety to be convincing, with just enough intuition to paint the whole picture.
In a novel which takes its name from a set of chairs made from human skin, and given the two passages I've quoted, you might expect a general tone of grotesqueness which is actually missing here – or at least, it's there, but it's subtle, underlying an almost pastoral rendering of an ever-so-slightly-disadvantaged childhood that brings to mind Witold Gombrowicz's stated aim of 'smuggling contraband' inside of traditional forms. But Comyns is subtler than Gombrowicz, and it's hard to tell what her aim might be, aside from to entertain, to provoke, to mesmerise, which is something she does slowly but surely over the course of her patiently-unfolding narrative. According to the introduction Barbara Comyns was a painter, and she has the painter's sense of the visual and timeless, yet with just enough of the novelist's concern with events to make of her novel more than a word-painting.
I try not to get too excited when I'm reading a new author – try not to expect too much before at least the halfway mark in a novel I have never heard of before. But at this point I'm hopeful Barbara Comyns is that rarest thing – a fluke discovery who will grow to be a much-loved familiar. So far, she hasn't fumbled once. So far, she embodies perfectly the temperament I feel most love for in an artist: the quiet striving after the magical without any of the florid gestures of the crowd-pleasing magician. So far, The Skin Chairs is as natural and right-seeming a masterpiece as I've read in months. And coming so soon on the heels of Natsume Soseki's The Gate (my second reading of an all-time favourite), that's quite a feat. Cristoph Meckel, Willa Cather, Felisberto Hernandez – so far, I'd put Comyns up there with all of them. Now let's hope I haven't spoken too soon. Whatever the outcome, this is some kind of a discovery. I'll update this when I've finished and let you know how it went.
A few weeks later: A re-evaluation, because the book has not stayed with me quite as much as I had hoped, because true to form I was slightly too impressed by this discovery – so rare – from out of left field. Also I neglected to mention the comedy. It's dark, it's real, it's ever so slightly gothic, but there's a strain of off-the-wall humour that makes the mix unique. For me, it grew wings early, took off and sometimes soared, but never quite reached the destination that would have made it transcendental. Still, the flight was something. Maybe not a masterpiece, but the work of a master, for sure.
We were allowed a night-light, because several times during the night I had disturbed the house by screaming fits caused by nightmares. They may have been caused by the shock of Father's death, for I had never suffered from them before. One night I dreamt that Mother's head had been severed and made into a pork pie. Although it was a pork pie, I could still see it was a dead head. There was another fearful dream that Father was floating down the canal, all enlarged with water, and that eels were living in him. Now that there was a night-light, I did not cry for long when I woke up after one of these frightful dreams, but I dared not go to sleep again in case another came. To keep myself awake and calm myself I would go through each room at home so that it almost seemed as if I was there. I tried to recall everything they contained: the yellow rug in the drawing room, which we used to cut pieces from to make dolls' wigs; the faded morning-room curtains with monkeys climbing up them – it was always a sign that summer was coming when they were hung; the enormous brass bedstead in the spare room, all draped in chintz curtains, with its feather mattress – sometimes we slept there when we were ill, because it was on the sunny side of the house, and Father used to thump the mattress to make a hollow for us to lie in.
It's tempting to think that so much detail could only be autobiographical, but if so it's hard to imagine how Barbara Comyns could have stored enough recollections to pull off this feat more than once – and the introduction informs us that this is not an autobiographical novel ('Only the skin chairs are true, I saw them,' said Comyns). Also impressive is the tightrope-walker's sense of balance implicit in this writing: never does it collapse, nor even threaten to, under its weight of detail; always character, emotion, instinct and plot co-exist in harmony. Things happen – simultaneous plotlines, interactions of characters on many levels, developments in the village – and little Frances notes it all, with just enough naivety to be convincing, with just enough intuition to paint the whole picture.
A door which had been closed before was now partly open, and it was definitely from there that the breathing came. We stood still, not daring to pass it, then we moved forward very slowly and quietly and, although we were so afraid, we couldn't help looking through the open door as we passed. There was something very red and white inside – most likely a hassock, I thought, or even a huge cherry pie. Then we saw it was the General's head lying there by the door, and one eye was open and the other shut. The open eye saw us and he sort of gurgled and slightly moved one freckled old hand. We thought he was lying on the floor like that to frighten us; perhaps he was suddenly going to grab one of our legs.
'Do you think he's having a fit, or is it just a frightening game?' I asked Esme, but she thought he was drunk and might at any moment attack us, so we left him there and ran out into the rain.
In a novel which takes its name from a set of chairs made from human skin, and given the two passages I've quoted, you might expect a general tone of grotesqueness which is actually missing here – or at least, it's there, but it's subtle, underlying an almost pastoral rendering of an ever-so-slightly-disadvantaged childhood that brings to mind Witold Gombrowicz's stated aim of 'smuggling contraband' inside of traditional forms. But Comyns is subtler than Gombrowicz, and it's hard to tell what her aim might be, aside from to entertain, to provoke, to mesmerise, which is something she does slowly but surely over the course of her patiently-unfolding narrative. According to the introduction Barbara Comyns was a painter, and she has the painter's sense of the visual and timeless, yet with just enough of the novelist's concern with events to make of her novel more than a word-painting.
I walked in the night with my lantern, and disturbed owls cried as they hunted for field-mice. I did not mind them; it was the bats I was scared of as they swooped and flickered around me, squeaking in the dark. The earth was still hard with frost and sometimes long brambles entwined themselves in my skirt and I had to put the lantern down while I freed myself. Once I stumbled and the lamp went out and I couldn't manage the matches with my gloved hands. The complete darkness made me afraid and I remembered the lepers and imagined they were peering through the hedges at me. When at last I got the lamp burning again, I warmed my hand against the glass and, to steady myself, read the joke on the back of the matchbox and tried to laugh.
I try not to get too excited when I'm reading a new author – try not to expect too much before at least the halfway mark in a novel I have never heard of before. But at this point I'm hopeful Barbara Comyns is that rarest thing – a fluke discovery who will grow to be a much-loved familiar. So far, she hasn't fumbled once. So far, she embodies perfectly the temperament I feel most love for in an artist: the quiet striving after the magical without any of the florid gestures of the crowd-pleasing magician. So far, The Skin Chairs is as natural and right-seeming a masterpiece as I've read in months. And coming so soon on the heels of Natsume Soseki's The Gate (my second reading of an all-time favourite), that's quite a feat. Cristoph Meckel, Willa Cather, Felisberto Hernandez – so far, I'd put Comyns up there with all of them. Now let's hope I haven't spoken too soon. Whatever the outcome, this is some kind of a discovery. I'll update this when I've finished and let you know how it went.
A few weeks later: A re-evaluation, because the book has not stayed with me quite as much as I had hoped, because true to form I was slightly too impressed by this discovery – so rare – from out of left field. Also I neglected to mention the comedy. It's dark, it's real, it's ever so slightly gothic, but there's a strain of off-the-wall humour that makes the mix unique. For me, it grew wings early, took off and sometimes soared, but never quite reached the destination that would have made it transcendental. Still, the flight was something. Maybe not a masterpiece, but the work of a master, for sure.
January 3, 2022
Whenever I’d search online hoping to acquire this 1986 paperback, I’d discover it was prohibitively expensive. One mid-October night as I searched again, I came across a copy priced in the teens, twice what I’d usually pay for a used paperback. But it was much cheaper than the few other copies on offer. I immediately clicked ‘buy’ and figuratively held my breath until I received an email confirming it had shipped. That was at the end of October. The book didn’t arrive until the end of December and I still wasn’t sure of its reality until I opened the envelope—what a relief.
As with other works by Comyns, the story reads as if it’s semi-autobiographical. I was immediately reminded of Sisters By a River, except its older brother is identified as such (see my review) and its youngest sister is another brother. (He gets some of the best lines.) A tragedy at The Skin Chairs’s center (though not at its core) is reminiscent of The Juniper Tree, though, ultimately, it’s not as tragic and certainly more “real” than the latter’s.
I finished the novel a half-hour before midnight on the last day of 2021 and I still have its first-person narrative voice in my head. Comyns’s trademark naiveté works perfectly for Frances, ten-years-old at the start of the events. If there’s any wonder why I’ll follow Comyns anywhere, Frances’s cousin states a reason early on: “I’m afraid she [Frances] is a morbid little thing.” Perhaps counterintuitively, this novel isn’t as dark as some of Comyns’s other works. I found it charming.
As with other works by Comyns, the story reads as if it’s semi-autobiographical. I was immediately reminded of Sisters By a River, except its older brother is identified as such (see my review) and its youngest sister is another brother. (He gets some of the best lines.) A tragedy at The Skin Chairs’s center (though not at its core) is reminiscent of The Juniper Tree, though, ultimately, it’s not as tragic and certainly more “real” than the latter’s.
I finished the novel a half-hour before midnight on the last day of 2021 and I still have its first-person narrative voice in my head. Comyns’s trademark naiveté works perfectly for Frances, ten-years-old at the start of the events. If there’s any wonder why I’ll follow Comyns anywhere, Frances’s cousin states a reason early on: “I’m afraid she [Frances] is a morbid little thing.” Perhaps counterintuitively, this novel isn’t as dark as some of Comyns’s other works. I found it charming.
September 15, 2015
Comyns continues to be a pleasure, with so many amazing turns of phrase and strange but perfect juxtapositions between mundane and morbid on every page. It's all a little unsettling, but rings true to the vague menaces and unreliable adults bound to haunt children everywhere. All the same, I feel like this wasn't quite up to the focus and intensity of her earlier novels of the 50s, perhaps trading in creepy fairy-tale specifics for universality. As such, it may take slightly longer to get caught up, but it still casts a deep and lasting spell.
August 24, 2015
Probably my favorite Comyns, right up there with Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. This hits the Comyns sweet spot for me: the young, naive narrator living in an idyllic country town, with a large family who often live beyond their means; prickly relations headed by a domineering female; eccentric, eccentric friends and neighbors; the horrors and traumas of childhood leavened by humor.
I had been in a rather depressing reading slump for a while, having recently moved to a new house, and I didn't have access to many of my books because they were all packed up, and even after unpacking them, I was either too busy unpacking or too worn out from unpacking to read for very long without falling asleep. Barbara Comyns brought me out of it. First I read The Vet's Daughter; although I enjoyed it a great deal, I found it a little too bleak, a little too harsh, and lacking Comyn's usual sly, subtle humor. It broke the slump, however, and left me hungry for more Comyns. The Skin Chairs is where it's at, it's the bee's knees. Just what I needed, right book, right time.
I had been in a rather depressing reading slump for a while, having recently moved to a new house, and I didn't have access to many of my books because they were all packed up, and even after unpacking them, I was either too busy unpacking or too worn out from unpacking to read for very long without falling asleep. Barbara Comyns brought me out of it. First I read The Vet's Daughter; although I enjoyed it a great deal, I found it a little too bleak, a little too harsh, and lacking Comyn's usual sly, subtle humor. It broke the slump, however, and left me hungry for more Comyns. The Skin Chairs is where it's at, it's the bee's knees. Just what I needed, right book, right time.
June 6, 2018
People I trust have been telling me I needed to read Comyns. I believed them, but took my sweet-ass time about it. Turns out they were right and I should have got my act together quicker. This is fantastic. Bit like a precursor to Joy Williams, if that means anything much to you. Brilliant stuff, which hopefully will be back in print soon (i'm looking at you Virago!).
December 26, 2016
A mid 20th century British bildungsroman following a young girl and her family for a couple of seasons of her life, dealing with all kinds of troubles, small and large. There's quite a bit of humor, and Comyns does a great job flushing out about a dozen or so characters in our narrator's orbit. The British class system plays large in the background, and there's the skin chair mcguffin (creating a lovely ending) but I'm not the best reader of Comyns, methinks.
June 19, 2022
I've been rather intrigued by this one for some time, particularly after reading Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, so I was very pleased to find a copy at a reasonable price. It is quite similar in tone to Who Was Changed, in that it blends the macabre with the mundane, and has some truly bizarre characters.
Narrated by 10 year old Frances, it opens with her staying with her horsey relations, the Lawrence's, who are rather condescending and look down on her as the poor relation. Unfortunately, when her father does during this stay, her whole family and up being taken under the Lawrence's wing to be bullied by the spiteful Aunt Lawrence. Frances does manage to befriend some odd people, who naturally her aunt disapproved of, but they make for entertaining reading. The skin chairs are a gruesome memento that the Major, one of their neighbours, brought back from the Boer war, and hold a grim fascination for Frances, they crop up from time to time throughout the novel for extra weirdness.
I do enjoy her books but I can see they won't appeal to everyone, by I for one am keen to get hold of more by her.
Narrated by 10 year old Frances, it opens with her staying with her horsey relations, the Lawrence's, who are rather condescending and look down on her as the poor relation. Unfortunately, when her father does during this stay, her whole family and up being taken under the Lawrence's wing to be bullied by the spiteful Aunt Lawrence. Frances does manage to befriend some odd people, who naturally her aunt disapproved of, but they make for entertaining reading. The skin chairs are a gruesome memento that the Major, one of their neighbours, brought back from the Boer war, and hold a grim fascination for Frances, they crop up from time to time throughout the novel for extra weirdness.
I do enjoy her books but I can see they won't appeal to everyone, by I for one am keen to get hold of more by her.
September 10, 2014
Such an onslaught of detail, such an incoming rush of sensory effects that it's difficult to know what to call this. A coming-of-age novel where the days stream by but the characters don't change-- a kaleidoscopic novel that keeps mostly to the same setting ... A character study, but one where nothing is revealed, in the unending flow of both triviality and entirety.
Comyns is fascinated by the perspective of adolescence, but in the most adult way possible, a perspective that doesn't shortchange the insights of the childhood years. When her ten-year-old narrator doesn't quite get the picture, she herself understands that she probably isn't old enough yet, and seems to know instinctively there is much beneath the surface.
Rather than single out useful emblems or motifs upon which to hinge the story, the author instead opts for full immersion, that Incoming Rush thing, where the doors are always wide open and the eyes and ears too. The symbolic presence of the Skin Chairs themselves is never parsed or paired with a plausible meaning. In the end they are a Duchampian set of forms, enigmatic figures on a chessboard.
At that and much more we're left to wonder. And really, that is where you are, when you're ten years old, coping, wondering. No explanations, no regrets, a compelling read.
Comyns is fascinated by the perspective of adolescence, but in the most adult way possible, a perspective that doesn't shortchange the insights of the childhood years. When her ten-year-old narrator doesn't quite get the picture, she herself understands that she probably isn't old enough yet, and seems to know instinctively there is much beneath the surface.
Rather than single out useful emblems or motifs upon which to hinge the story, the author instead opts for full immersion, that Incoming Rush thing, where the doors are always wide open and the eyes and ears too. The symbolic presence of the Skin Chairs themselves is never parsed or paired with a plausible meaning. In the end they are a Duchampian set of forms, enigmatic figures on a chessboard.
At that and much more we're left to wonder. And really, that is where you are, when you're ten years old, coping, wondering. No explanations, no regrets, a compelling read.
June 11, 2021
Maybe my favorite Comyns novel so far. Dark, funny, unpredictable. Always a few sidesteps away from becoming a merely charming coming-of-age story.
And those chairs.
How is this still out-of-print when everything else by her has been reissued?
4.5 stars
And those chairs.
How is this still out-of-print when everything else by her has been reissued?
4.5 stars
April 28, 2020
This is vintage Comyns, shot through with a clever blend of the macabre and the mundane that characterises her work. Needless to say, I absolutely adored it.
The novel is narrated by Frances, a ten-year-old girl with just the right mix of wide-eyed innocence and active curiosity about the world around her. As the story opens, Frances – one of six children – is sent by her mother to stay with the Lawrences, a family of ‘horsey’ relatives who live in Leicestershire. Aunt Lawrence is a spiteful, domineering woman, intent on belittling Frances and her rather impoverished family, making light of their father and his work for a mattress company. (Frances’ father is in fact a legal adviser to the firm, a role that Aunt Lawrence appears to have forgotten, preferring instead to imply he is a lowly labourer. There is quite a lot snobbery in this novel, particularly amongst the Lawrences.) The Lawrence girls – eighteen-year-old Ruby and thirteen-year-old Grace – are little better than their mother, adding to the bleak atmosphere at the rather gothic Tower Hill. It is only once Frances’ father dies that the Lawrences begin to show a degree of sympathy for the girl.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
The novel is narrated by Frances, a ten-year-old girl with just the right mix of wide-eyed innocence and active curiosity about the world around her. As the story opens, Frances – one of six children – is sent by her mother to stay with the Lawrences, a family of ‘horsey’ relatives who live in Leicestershire. Aunt Lawrence is a spiteful, domineering woman, intent on belittling Frances and her rather impoverished family, making light of their father and his work for a mattress company. (Frances’ father is in fact a legal adviser to the firm, a role that Aunt Lawrence appears to have forgotten, preferring instead to imply he is a lowly labourer. There is quite a lot snobbery in this novel, particularly amongst the Lawrences.) The Lawrence girls – eighteen-year-old Ruby and thirteen-year-old Grace – are little better than their mother, adding to the bleak atmosphere at the rather gothic Tower Hill. It is only once Frances’ father dies that the Lawrences begin to show a degree of sympathy for the girl.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
January 5, 2015
You read this on tenterhooks; it's a weird mixture of cozy and uncomfortable, with the emphasis on uneasiness. It's got unforgettable characters (Aunt Lawrence, Vanda and Jane, Mrs. Alexander with her gold shoes and other proclivities) who drive the would-be simple story of a young girl from a poor, eccentric family who loves to draw, is kind to animals, and knows her botany.
It surprised me that I was allowed more freedom than Ruby, who was grown up and wore her hair in a sad little bun.
It surprised me that I was allowed more freedom than Ruby, who was grown up and wore her hair in a sad little bun.
August 24, 2018
Another rural domestic drama here, featuring a less eccentric family than the Willoweeds of Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (though still peppered with plenty of eccentric minor characters). While it had its moments, I did not find this one as compelling nor as darkly amusing. Part of it was due to the first-person narration, which limits the scope to a rather narrow aperture and hampers the pacing. Frances is a rather aimless character, and since her POV drives the plot, it ends up aimless, as well. Sometimes I like this in a book, but here it can get a bit tiresome (or maybe I just wasn't in the right reading mood for it). I did like how Comyns brings the skin chairs of the title full circle at the end, but frankly it felt like a last-ditch effort to round up a plot that had gone too far out to pasture long before.
May 24, 2016
I am so grateful to have finally discovered this utterly unique, marvelously strange and insightful writer; though not quite as enticingly sinister as the incomparable "The Vet's Daughter," this is in many ways quite as moving, and abounds in visionary passages that perfectly capture the strangeness of childhood, and the general awfulness of the human race.
December 6, 2022
A slowly unspooling novel about a child learning about the troubles of the adult world. Death is the costar here. At first, I wasn't that into this book. I love Barbara Comyns, so I was a little disappointed. It was only until a few days later, and after speaking to my friend, another Comyns head, that I began to appreciate this one.
April 27, 2021
4,5 stars. My thoughts: https://theblankgarden.com/2021/04/27...
September 19, 2009
Not that I've read a lot of Flannery O'Connor, but it occurred to me after finishing this book that Barbara Comyns might have something in common with her. (Kalen, care to comment?) I’ve read a few of Comyns’s books now (all thanks to Kalen), and I liked this one the best of all, perhaps because it was told from a child’s point of view and was a bit more lighthearted, even though there were frightening or sad parts. In all of her novels, her subject seems to be human suffering, and although they are often darkly funny, they can go to some very depressing and unfunny places. But this one charmed me. (Thanks again, Kalen!)
January 29, 2018
This was a good, but not great, Barbara Comyns novel. It is narrated convincingly by a young girl who's family has fallen on hard times. It explores their journey as they come to terms with their newly reduced lifestyle, as well as the developments of her siblings. She befriends some eccentric and rather cruel characters in the village. The novel didn't have the same humor/horror that her other books, such as Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead or The Vet's Daughter did and was largely unmemorable.
January 9, 2015
"The room had the sickly smell of caged birds and spiteful women" - Barbara Comyns pars pro toto.
February 8, 2021
Clearly lays bare a view of women's and girl's situation circa 1950s or 1960s England. The idyllic village/ bucolic life holds shallows dangerously close for them.
Women must secure the patronage of a man with money to support her and any children she has. Sons are prioritised as much as possible at the expense of daughters who get shafted and even sometimes at the expense of mothers. Women are liabilities, impediments and rivals.
Our narrator, Frances, is a ten year old girl, naive yet clear eyed. The world she inhabits is new to her and she observes and explores it. The reader is shown not told, giving veracity to our conclusions. The circumstances are not laid on thick(and are even escaped from in the end), just show the precarious grip on security for and the tough life that befalls women and their children, especially their daughters, who lose their tenuous grip on it.
We see women under pressure and the consequences. Frances' mother becomes a widow and Frances and her siblings suffer privation (efforts are made to largely spare her brother from this). Widow Vanda, probably depressed, in desperation for the attentions of a man causes injury to her already neglected daughter Jane, and attempting to preserve herself smears Frances. Aunt Lawrence values in her daughter Ruby only whatever oneupmanship she can report over other girls to boost her self esteem. Ruby striving for favour puts others down, notably Polly who is mired in scandal, and finally runs away and elopes at a very young age.
Females' struggle to survive is played out on the backdrop of a very class conscious society. Perhaps Ruby's elopement with the help communicates to us that the crushing sexism against women was greater than the classism against working class people. Wasn't there something about working class women retaining more autonomy and agency than their stifled, hamstrung middle and upper class sisters in England in earlier times? Or maybe Ruby was just suffering knocks in to further realms of hardship on her scramble to get through on the path that girls/ women had to hew?
There were some whimsical bits such as Mrs Alexander with her monkeys (one woman who seems independent although she also engages in shenanigans like walling in a piano to thwart bailiffs) and the eponymous skin chairs.
I put this book down for weeks at a time, a few times, it is absent of an acute drama triangle.
As a piece showing women's grim hand all the more hard hitting due to avoidance of heavy handedness it does the job. She even gives Frances and family a reprieve from their hardship at the end so definitely no bludgeoning it in. So I guess I have to give it 5.
Women must secure the patronage of a man with money to support her and any children she has. Sons are prioritised as much as possible at the expense of daughters who get shafted and even sometimes at the expense of mothers. Women are liabilities, impediments and rivals.
Our narrator, Frances, is a ten year old girl, naive yet clear eyed. The world she inhabits is new to her and she observes and explores it. The reader is shown not told, giving veracity to our conclusions. The circumstances are not laid on thick(and are even escaped from in the end), just show the precarious grip on security for and the tough life that befalls women and their children, especially their daughters, who lose their tenuous grip on it.
We see women under pressure and the consequences. Frances' mother becomes a widow and Frances and her siblings suffer privation (efforts are made to largely spare her brother from this). Widow Vanda, probably depressed, in desperation for the attentions of a man causes injury to her already neglected daughter Jane, and attempting to preserve herself smears Frances. Aunt Lawrence values in her daughter Ruby only whatever oneupmanship she can report over other girls to boost her self esteem. Ruby striving for favour puts others down, notably Polly who is mired in scandal, and finally runs away and elopes at a very young age.
Females' struggle to survive is played out on the backdrop of a very class conscious society. Perhaps Ruby's elopement with the help communicates to us that the crushing sexism against women was greater than the classism against working class people. Wasn't there something about working class women retaining more autonomy and agency than their stifled, hamstrung middle and upper class sisters in England in earlier times? Or maybe Ruby was just suffering knocks in to further realms of hardship on her scramble to get through on the path that girls/ women had to hew?
There were some whimsical bits such as Mrs Alexander with her monkeys (one woman who seems independent although she also engages in shenanigans like walling in a piano to thwart bailiffs) and the eponymous skin chairs.
I put this book down for weeks at a time, a few times, it is absent of an acute drama triangle.
As a piece showing women's grim hand all the more hard hitting due to avoidance of heavy handedness it does the job. She even gives Frances and family a reprieve from their hardship at the end so definitely no bludgeoning it in. So I guess I have to give it 5.
March 26, 2020
This is a 1962 novel by Barbara Comyns, who I previously read and reviewed for Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, which had a creepy and detached air, with a sinister and sardonic underbelly. This book still has a darkness to it, but there’s also more heart to it. We meet Frances on one of her most interesting and horrifying days, the day who father dies. She is lost for words on this day because she had just seen something so alluring and awful, a set of six chairs made from the skins of six men killed in the Boer War and imported by an eccentric uncle. She was of a mind to tell her father about this when she learns he had died.
So she, her mother, and her siblings are taken in by those horsey relatives mentioned in the title of the post. These relations lives on a farm where Frances is able to play with the cows, look at the pigs, gaze at the chickens, and avoid the horses. The general plot of this novel is simple how this move happens, how one aunt is terrible, and how her life moves toward the next clear stage.
The heart of this novel is in the depth of the narration. Frances notices everything. And talks about everything. But rather than be precocious, or be the older Frances looking back and understanding, this Frances is too young to process everything, but still goes for it. So there’s a lot of really funny, almost sweet, but infinitely charming little moments where a singular strange detail (such as being excused from a class just as they were about to talk about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s neck).
So she, her mother, and her siblings are taken in by those horsey relatives mentioned in the title of the post. These relations lives on a farm where Frances is able to play with the cows, look at the pigs, gaze at the chickens, and avoid the horses. The general plot of this novel is simple how this move happens, how one aunt is terrible, and how her life moves toward the next clear stage.
The heart of this novel is in the depth of the narration. Frances notices everything. And talks about everything. But rather than be precocious, or be the older Frances looking back and understanding, this Frances is too young to process everything, but still goes for it. So there’s a lot of really funny, almost sweet, but infinitely charming little moments where a singular strange detail (such as being excused from a class just as they were about to talk about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s neck).
February 4, 2018
This is one of the best books I've ever read from a child's point of view, yet telling a story for adults, complete with dark portraits written by that child. Frances is a sensitive, curious, compassionate, adventurous spirit in spite of her fears and some unpleasant discoveries about adult behavior -- how snobby and irresponsible adults can be; and how horribly insensate (as exemplified by the skin chairs referenced in the title. She explores the landscape and gets to know people, even people she doesn't much like at first, and is fascinated by eccentricity. As an American from the U.S., I in turn found fascinating these close-up observations of life in an English village.
March 5, 2022
Another semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale from Comyns, and another triumph—a deft touch mixing innocence and precociousness, both dark and charming, with some beautifully written passages and laugh-out-loud turns of phrase.
October 11, 2021
This his the fifth book I've read by this British author. This one is told from a ten year old girl's point of view. Anoka County Interlibrary loan found this at St. Olaf College.
May 1, 2022
Loved this. Life in England in the 20s
Want to read
May 4, 2022Barbara.
March 24, 2017
Surreal magical realism; beautiful, dark and haunting
May 21, 2012
A little more grounded in reality than Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, this novel about genteel country folk, told from the point of view of a bewildered young girl who is forced to stay with "horsey relations" after her father dies, has a meandering feel that values eccentric details over plot. I liked it, and plan to read more Barbara Comyns. Yay for weird British authors.
January 1, 2023
Comyns has quickly become my favorite author, and The Skin Chairs is a perfect example of why. It’s a funny, dark, often terrifyingly sad story told with the dry, social-satire wit of an Edwardian comedy and the freewheeling, unpredictable strangeness of beat fiction. Every paragraph has something interesting to say. Tremendously fun to read, unforgettable after the fact.
September 11, 2013
3.5 stars really but I'm rounding up because it's Barbara Comyns and I love her. Much more 'straight' than her other novels but still tinged with strangeness and the weird obsessions of childhood. "Sisters by a River" and "Who was Changed and who was Dead" have yet to be beaten, however.
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