I was so pleased to get a copy of this reprint of a 1984 novel by the amazing Barbara Comyns, which I've just reviewed for Shiny New Books. I first discovered her novels ten years ago, and had a real splurge on them, but this one has been out of print since it first appeared. It was almost certainly written many years earlier: in any case it's set in WW2 and, like many of her novels, has obvious autobiographical elements.
Mr Fox is the story of a young woman who is separated from her unreliable husband. She has a three-year-old daughter, and is struggling to make ends meet. So when Mr Fox, a charming local garage owner and shameless black-marketeer, offers to take care of them both, she accepts that she has no other real choice. Soon war breaks out, and the three of them hurtle from place to place, dodging bombs and landlords and Mr Fox's dissatisfied customers. He's full of creative ideas for making money, and at one time their house is so full of old pianos he's bought with a view to fixing up and selling on that they can hardly move.
If you've already discovered Comyns, you won't need any urging to get hold of this one. If you haven't, then it's really time you did. She is a truly unique writer, and this novel manages to combine wry wit with a remarkable first hand account of life during WW2. And then there's her narrative voice, which Graham Greene described as that of an ‘innocent eye which observes with childlike simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrences'. I've described the novel in more detail on Shiny - you can read my review here.
