Novella a Day in May 2022 No.21

/ madamebibilophile

Mr Fox – Barbara Comyns (1987) 175 pages

Having read Barbara Comyns recently for the 1954 Club, I was delighted to pick her up again for this reading project. How I loved Mr Fox – there is no-one with a voice quite like Barbara Comyns.

The novella opens with Caroline and her small daughter living in a flat with Mr Fox. They are not romantically involved, but the pragmatic Mr Fox suggests it would work as a financial arrangement. His work is sporadic, varied, and not always entirely legal:

“It wasn’t always holidays Mr. Fox was enjoying when he went away. Sometimes he went to prison, not for crime but because he didn’t pay his rates to the borough council. He thought it a pity to waste money on rates and preferred going to prison – it was Brixton he went to. He once suggested I went to prison instead of paying my rates, but I didn’t like the thought of being shut up and when I made a few enquiries about Holloway I heard it was perfectly beastly there and not to be compared to Brixton.”

I really enjoy Comyns’ characters which she somehow manages to make guileless yet never fey. They are survivors but never in a remotely aggressive or self-pitying way.

Caroline’s husband has left and she’s not sorry. She is caring for her small daughter Jenny and worried about money. Mr Fox is a savvy and useful friend, but can also be moody and unreasonable.

“I hoped Mr. Fox didn’t think I’d runaway and left Jenny on his hands; he might even put her in an orphanage and it would take months to get her out again.”

This is the end of the 1930s, and so we know times are going to get much more difficult for these London-dwellers. Comyns captures the bombing in her own inimitable way:

“So I had to spend the day wandering about without any shoes. I passed some of the time filling sandbags in the street; heaps of people were doing it and it seemed a fashionable thing to do.”

Of course, the war brought opportunities for people like Mr Fox, and essentially he is a spiv. Caroline seems both aware and entirely unaware of what Mr Fox is up to, and helps him in the unlikely trade of second-hand pianos. After a time in the suburbs which makes them miserable, they return to the city:

“I began to enjoy an almost empty London. Shopping became almost a pleasure and sometimes we would go to the theatre and there would be hardly anyone there; and it was the same in restaurants. Often in the evening we would take the dogs for a walk in Hyde Park and it would be deserted and lovely. Once when we were walking home a flying bomb stopped right over our heads, and as we turned and ran in the opposite direction a great explosion came and then an enormous amount of dust. The dogs were more upset than we were.”

Comyns has such a unique and unlikely view on things I’ve no idea how typical the experiences in Mr Fox are, but I understand it was based on her real-life situation during that time. She doesn’t shy away from the difficulties of life but presents them in such a surprising way I’m often astonished rather than saddened. Mr Fox was still an emotionally affecting novel though, and such an entertaining one. I was sorry to reach the end.

“Perhaps it was just as well to get the sad part of my life over at one go and have all the good things to look forward to.

18 thoughts on “Novella a Day in May 2022 No.21”

  3. Lovely, lovely review review, Madame Bibi. I really enjoyed this one too. It has just the right amount of creepiness, and the challenges of the time period are brilliantly evoked. I suspect it’s pretty representative of many people’s experiences during the early stages of the war.

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  5. I do love Comyns as you’re probably aware. I was fascinated that aspects of this are based on Comyns own life at this period. She was quite the character herself I think, and had a unique way of looking at things. Mr Fox was a brilliantly drawn figure, just the right amount of the slightly sinister about him, yet somehow very believable.

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    • Absolutely Ali, I think her unique vision was who she was. It always seems so consistent and unaffected, I’m sure it’s how she saw things. I think Mr Fox was based on someone she lived with for a while? Such a brilliant character, that sinister quality you mention meant I was never sure which way he would go.

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  6. What a lovely review madame B! I’ve only read the one Comyns, which I loved, and although I have plenty lined up, I’m sorely tempted by this one. It sounds wonderful with Mr. Fox a very ambiguous figure. And superficially, that cover is lovely!

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    • I think if you liked her before Kaggsy you’ll enjoy this one a lot! It’s definitely a wonderful example of her unique voice. Mr Fox is very hard to pin down, and his slipperiness certainly suits his career! The cover is lovely, a great image of London at that time.

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  8. Sounds like an interesting take on London during the Blitz – a period and setting I seem to have been reading about a lot recently without deliberately setting out to do so. I love the idea of filling sandbags as being “fashionable”!

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