A Touch of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns
I adored this book: it’s one of my favourite reads of the year. But put all misty-eyed thoughts of Christmas aside, the mistletoe here is poison, a blight, the evil-eye.
This subtle toxin is a good place to start: it defines the prose in A Touch of Mistletoe. Comyns’s sentences start elegantly enough, but right at the close something ghastly wriggles: a sting at the end of the tinsel. The horrid gaze of the fried eggs, the vomit in the vegetable basket, the mouse in the nightie, the dog-chewed walls, the puppies born dead, the sisters eating maggots, the pillows stuffed with dog hair. I was often reminded of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Comyns shifts the reader’s gaze alarmingly from the expected subject to something else entirely. The surprising thing is not the news that the mother is dead, but that she died the day after the walls had been swept with the long broom.
Set before the Second World War, the story follows sisters Vicky and Blanche. Vicky, the narrator, longs to be an artist; Blanche a mannequin. Vicky wants happiness, Blanche financial security. But theirs is a strange hand. Vicky sets sail immediately for Holland, working for some filthy dog-fighters. It’s a sort of nightmarish twist on Lucy Snowe’s experience in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. The savage surroundings and isolation make for powerful imagery and establish early on that A Touch of Mistletoe deviates from the tea-and-doily stories of Comyns’s contemporary Miss Read.
Reunited in London, Vicky and Blanche starve together, cooking on a candle. For fear of losing her job, Vicky must tolerate the tongues and hands of the men her office does business with. The girls are constantly at the mercy of the men in their lives, and their loser brother chooses not to help them.
The humour here is dark and wicked, sometimes laugh-aloud, often unexpected. It’s humour as self-defense.
‘Your mother isn’t quite herself today, poorly, you know’ were words that frequently crossed [Grandfather’s] lips, and when we children heard the word ‘poorly’ applied to anyone who was ill, perhap an innocent child suffering with measles, we took it for granted that they had been drinking bottles of port or sherry. (4)
I really cared for Vicky. I loved her narrative voice and the oddity of her expression. Circumstances prompt her to make sad choices, and this, served with Comyns’s black humour, leaves the reader with a complex, haunting, wistful aftertaste.
An utter joy to read.
Loved the Daunt Books Publishing edition as well, with its citric spine, French flaps, and those threatening chrysanthemums designed and illustrated by Holly Ovenden. Perfect.
WHAT TO READ NEXT
If you liked A Touch of Mistletoe, try We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer, and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.
