house of dolls

House of Dolls by Barbara Comyns (St. Martin’s Press, 1990)

Another very odd, and very delightful and engaging, book by Barbara Comyns.  Amy Doll, our  heroine, a youngish widow in 50s London with a teenage daughter, struggles to makes ends meet by taking in boarders, elderly ladies who in turn support themselves by entertaining elderly gentleman in various innocent and not-so-innocent ways.  And a sympathetic policeman lurks around, ostensibly gardening but secretly in love with and courting Mrs. Doll.  The daughter skips school to make mosaic installations out of broken crockery  in an abandoned garden with a lonely fat young man who seems more than a bit touched.  In lesser — or merely other — hands, this would all be either sensational or unbelievable, but Comnys is able to find just the right slightly melancholy tone to make it all work and become genuinely moving.  A sequence wherein the oldest of the “Dolls” takes a job as a private cook is comic/tragic tour de force.  I loved reading this book; it was pure pleasure.