Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have kind of a thing for British early-to-mid-20th-century women writers: Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Jane Gardam, et al. I don’t know how Sylvia Townsend Warner escaped me. I did pick up (and enjoyed) The Corner That Held Them owing to my fascination with medieval monasticism, and then her competent and sympathetic biography of T.H. White (my review of that is here ). Then I kept seeing mentions of this novel, and thought, well, guess I should try it.
I loved it. Gentle, sly, quirky, odd, marvelously imagined and written – I kept stopping because I didn’t want it to end. The tale is Laura’s, a turn-of-the-century young “spinster,” whose life is lived by the assumptions of others so smoothly and calmly and easily that she cannot even maintain her own name, let alone realize her life should be hers to live, and not just assigned to the supervision of male relatives and children. Until one day, she has a vision of a ripely fruiting orchard, picks a village off the map, and just…goes. And – as such things should always do in a good story – everything changes. Her new neighbors keep odd hours, she comes and goes as she pleases, exploring her new realm. She meets a lovely fellow who teaches her how to handle chickens – for the first time, she feels “wise and potent” rather than “useful.” Gradually she is drawn into the eccentric life of the village – and discovers it is rather more other-wordly than she had understood. And then, a cheery nephew decides he is going to come visit – and even live in – her village. She would once again be “Aunt Lolly,” subject to Titus’s whims and needs. She kneels in a meadow suddenly filled with cowslips – she had been waiting to see their great blossoming, but:
…she had watched the wrong fields…. The weight of all her unhappy years seemed for a moment to weigh her bosom down to the earth; she trembledm understanding for th first time how miserable she had been; and in another moment she was released. It was all gone, it could never be again, and never had been. Tears of thankfulness ran down her face. With every breath she drew, the scent of the cowslips flowed in and absolved her.
And now the fairy tale begins: a kitten arrives through the keyhole, strange little mishaps befall the importunate nephew, and Laura makes the acquaintance of a new friend who welcomes her, offers aid, and a place of belonging. Readers can decide for themselves who and what the devil may be, and what bargain is the right one to strike. You only get one life, after all, and it can be hard to see the good and evil thereof.
This is one I will reread. A gem.
And one last treat: I instantly recognized the cover of the NYRB edition I got from the library: a painting by August Natterer. Natterer is featured in Charlie English’s compelling and terrific book about the art of psychiatric inpatients during the Nazi era, The Gallery of Miracles and Madness. An imaginary head formed of woods and waterways, birds and animals, it is the perfect image for this odd and wonderful story.
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