A Touch of Mistletoe

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The morning I left home Mother was recovering from being poorly and she’d been sick in the vegetable basket.

First published in 1967, A Touch of Mistletoe is a coming-of-age story that shows Barbara Comyns’s inimitable voice at its best.

Sisters Victoria and Blanche live a secluded life in their grandfather’s house. When he dies, their mother, a war widow with a thirst for port, replaces drink with housework and the girls plan their escape. Blanche heads off to train as a model in London. Vicky wants to study art but answers an advert leading her to Holland, where she tends a pack of bull terriers. This is just the beginning of the sisters’ adventures which take them from poverty to a wider bohemian world as they encounter love and fluctuating fortunes.

‘Everyone should read Barbara Comyns . . . There is no one to beat her when it comes to the uncanny.’ Guardian

‘Strange and unsettling.’ Margaret Drabble

‘You never quite know where you are with Comyns – which is what makes her novels so intriguing.’ Telegraph

Comyns, Barbara

Sophia Fairclough and Me

Sophie Breese on the novels of Barbara Comyns

I was first introduced to Sophia Fairclough in 1985 by my new English teacher, the kind who came to lessons without notes and charmed those susceptible to such charm with his raw excitement for good...