Author(s): Barbara Comyns; Barbara Trapido (Introduction by)

Fiction

This novel is told through the eyes (and spelling) of a young girl in a vivid and funny evocation of the author's own extraordinary childhood.

On the banks of the River Avon, five sisters are born. The seasons come and go, the girls take their lessons under the ash tree, and always there is the sound of water swirling through the weir. Then, unexpectedly, an air of decay descends upon the house: ivy grows unchecked over the windows, angry shouts split the summer air, the milk sours in the larder and their father takes out his gun. Tragedy strikes the family, and before long the furniture is being auctioned off and the sisters dispersed among relatives. In her daring first novel, originally published in 1947, Barbara Comyns' unique young heroine relates the vivid, funny and bittersweet story of a childhood.

Review: Tragic, comic and completely bonkers all in one, I'd go as far as to call her something of a neglected genius -- Lucy Scholes * Guardian *
A vision that shifts between savagery, lyricism and tragic wit. A true original * Independent *
It is hard not to believe that Barbara Comyns's own adventures are entangled in her fiction. Sisters by a River, which she wrote for her own children -- Jane Gardam * Spectator *
Quite simply, Comyns' writes like no one else -- Maggie O'Farrell