Lolly Willowes: Or the Loving Huntsman

by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Other authorsAlison Lurie (Introduction)

Paperback, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

823.912

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

NYRB Classics (1999), Paperback, 230 pages

Description

"In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break away from her controlling family--a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson"--Publisher description.

User reviews

LibraryThing member AlexTheHunn

What a surprising and delightful book. This is about a woman who does not conform, does not fit the respectable mold, and who manages to persevere and even flourish as a result. This is not a typical "be true to yourself and everything will work out alright" tale, even though there are certainly

strong elements of that sentiment to be derived. The supernatural aspects of this novel caught me completely by surprise and were, therefore, more effective.

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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd

Well, this was strange yet wonderful. Laura Willowes was set to be the quintessential "auntie" of English life; unmarried, unappealing to the opposite sex (and uninterested in it as well), living with her brother, adored by his children, useful to his wife. But niggling in the back of her mind was

the notion that she wouldn't just carry on that way indefinitely, and one day she picked an odd little village with nothing to recommend it but its odd little name--Great Mop-- and announced that she was going to move there. Leaving her "Aunt Lolly" persona behind, Miss Willowes settles in to Great Mop and gradually begins to know the villagers. Although she doesn't seem to fit in here any more than she did in London society, she is at peace with her situation until one day she comes home to find an inexplicable kitten in her rooms. Here the wonder and the strangeness truly begin. The moment the kitten grabs and bites Miss Willowes hand, she realizes that she is a witch, and this kitten her familiar. Although she puts it that she has "made a compact with the devil" nothing about her story suggests a conscious decision to do that. (It isn't a spoiler to let you in on the fact that "the loving huntsman" of the subtitle is Satan, though not the horned satyr of so much popular culture. Rather he is a very ordinary looking gentleman who can disappear into his background, and who does not seem to move anyone to acts of sheer evil.) It just comes to her that now she is a witch. This passive acceptance of a fact so utterly outside the framework of this woman's prior existence struck a discord with me, and if I hadn't known it was coming (from reading blurbs on the cover and several reviews) I think I might have had one of those “WTH” moments and tossed the book aside. As it was, I kept reading, and I'm glad that I did, because Lolly's exploration of the world from her new perspective is really a joy. Her little conversation with Satan in the English countryside near the end of the book is just brilliant. Overall I was not as taken with this story as those who recommended it to me, but I give it 3 1/2 solid stars.

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LibraryThing member Gwendydd

It seems like the author had something she wanted to say about women's independence, so she wrote a 5-page essay about it, and then realized that the essay needed some context, so she wrote a 200-page novel to build up to the 5-page essay.

The rest of this review isn't exactly a spoiler, but since

the main events of the book don't happen until the very end, it's impossible to talk about the book without talking about how it ends, so read on with caution.

Laura Willowes (called Lolly by her niece and nephews) is a quintessential maiden aunt - after the death of her father, her married brothers and their wives take control of her life. She is cared for and given a place to live and enjoys helping to raise her nieces and nephews, but no one ever asks her what she wants. One day when she is in her middle age, she spontaneously decides to move to a small village in the countryside. The behavior of the villagers is rather strange. Laura soon realizes that they are all witches, and she joins them. And... that's pretty much it. She becomes a witch, meets the devil, gives her feminist speech, and that's the book.

I suppose that it's easy to find this book disappointing a hundred years after it is set, knowing that what Laura says at the end about women's right to independence not the controversial statement that it was at the time. I also found the brief dalliance in Satanism to be very underdeveloped. Laura just kind of realizes she's a witch one day, and never stops to think about the implications of Satanism or what it means to give her soul to the devil. In the midst of a feminist screed about women's independence, it seems odd that this monumental decision is just something that happens to her rather than something she chooses to do, and that her form of independence is basically just agreeing to the whims of some man she's never met and whose existence is only theoretical.

Despite all of that, the fact that I kept reading despite the fact that there was not really a plot does tell you something about how good the writing is - the book was still engaging.

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LibraryThing member Petroglyph

Published in 1926, a few years before Virginia Woolf would deliver her "A room of one's own" lecture, this book charts the life of Laura Willowes, a sedate spinster well in her forties, who's spent all her life in the service of first her father and then her brother, wearing her independence

uncomfortably but too apathetic to care much. An epiphany in a park leads her to leave all of that behind and move to a small rural village somewhat serendipitously selected from a guidebook. Here she can finally focus on her own happiness, aware as she's become that that possibility even exists. There she also explores different roles that are open to her as a middle-aged spinster of the years immediately after the first World War.

Laura Willowes is an elegantly inviting character, drawn with precise observations and well-chosen obstacles; pity never became the main reason I was rooting for her. The plot is fairly sparse in this one, and many pages go by between those events and decisions that make the plot move forward. Instead Warner relies on a hypnotic style to convey the constrained emotional life of her main character. She more or less succeeded in making the journey a pleasant one, but at times I found the story slow going and caught myself wanting to read other books instead. But once I was well into part three, the story picked up again, with enough external stimuli on Laura's mental life to compensate for a fairly slow first two thirds. I also enjoyed the overall absurdity of that final third.

The story slowly builds up to Laura's big monologue at the end, and even though this section could easily have devolved into a preachy tract, Warner keeps things deftly within Laura's voice, and it brings the whole of Laura's tale to a satisfying ending.

At three stars, I've deducted a star for those parts where I felt bored. But I'm glad I persevered, since this novel develops a bizarrish yet rewarding ending to a sweet character.

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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend

Lolly Willowes is the maiden aunt living hn her brothers house. She eventually tires of this and decides to move to a small Bedfordshire village where she finds her own place in the village. She also finds witchcraft and a place of her own. I
It's a gentle story, an exploration of finding your self

and finding a role within the world. This is a time just after world war I, when some people still lived off small inheritances.
It's an interesting look at that life and a woman's life then. I've read a fair number of books based in this period but from a man's point of view so this was an interesting change.

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LibraryThing member paperloverevolution

Not to spoil you or anything, but "the Loving Huntsman" is Satan. This should give you a clue as to what you're in for with this book: a sly, sweet, subversive, and magical ride.

LibraryThing member whatsmacksaid

This was lovely and delightful and absolutely satisfying. It spoke to me in the quietest and most empathetic ways.

LibraryThing member jo_lafaith

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner was such a cozy and truly delightful read. Crafted in three parts we get to know Laura, Lolly, in the wake of the death of her parents. She’s 28 at the start of the novel, unmarried, and not looking to be. She was extremely close with her father, who was

the most recent to die, and her grief absolutely overtakes her. Her older brother and his wife decided they need to take care of her. They want to move her out of their country home, and then to London, which they think will be good for her grief. In doing so they end up (in my opinion) taking advantage of her agreeable state. She spends a lot of time with her nieces and nephews and ends up devoting 20 years in that service.

The first part really covers all of that. And we get a good sense of who her family is and what the Willowes are like. We don’t get hung up in the minutia of the day to day, but you see a lot of love between the family members and also a real disconnect between them. The lines of love and pity are constantly crossed and the family members are very different in terms of what they’re looking for in life or even in their religious and familial directives.

The second part focuses a lot more on Lolly’s coming of age after the 20 year period. She starts to realize how unfulfilled she is. She’s 47 years old and she’s figuring out who she is. It’s kind of an awakening.

The third part deals with the main excitement of the book of which I do not want to spoil, but I would say it escalated quickly and it gets fun and interesting as she continues to come into her own. This is absolutely charming and while the pacing was not always my favorite (and I wanted more of a certain sections than I got) ultimately it felt really special and I’m so glad that I finally read it.

There were really poignant messages of moving on from the wrongs people have done you, and not having to do so through forgiveness. As well as messages of not being good at things even though you want to be, and even though you feel called to a way of life. Lolly is, in so many ways, working against herself constantly… but that’s okay, and that’s realistic.

I would recommend this pretty much to anybody who’s looking for something cozy, with low stakes and enjoyable writing. I did pick this up thinking it was going to be very autumnal and it’s really not. But it didn’t bother me too much. A great feminist classic, though, and we’ll worth

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LibraryThing member japaul22

In writing Lolly Willowes, Warner masterfully describes the awakening of Laura Willowes from a single woman being cared for by her family to a woman who takes control of her own life. Laura grows up attached to her father, caring for him and helping to run their household. When he dies, she is

expected to live with one of her brothers' families. Because in 1902, an adult woman surely could not live on her own. She spends years living with this family, spending time with her nieces until they also grow up and move on. And there she still is. But a chance encounter with a guidebook about a small village in the country leads her to take control of her own life and strike out on her own, much to the horror of her conservative family.

People in this village that she moves to keep to themselves, but as Laura connects to more and more to nature, she realizes there is magic all around her. The end really takes a strange turn, and while I got what Warner was doing, it also felt a little out of the blue to have Laura make a deal with Satan for her independence and to find that the sleepy town is full of witches!

I'm not sure yet if this book was brilliant or crazy.

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LibraryThing member AnnieMod

That was one weird novel. It did not start weird though - the first 2/3rds of the novel are a novel about the fate of single women of a certain class at the start of the 20th century. Then the last third comes and ejects all of that out of the window and leaves you wondering if that was meant to be

a supernatural tale or a psychological one or if someone somewhere got a bit crazy (the reader? the writer? both?)

Laura Willowes is a dutiful daughter and sister who lives in the countryside with her father and keeps house for him. She is quite happy with her life and independence. Until her father dies and her brothers cannot imagine her living on her own (it is 1902 after all) and she is forced to move to London to play the unwed aunt to her nephews and help run the house of her brother.

If the novel had ended here it would have been a nice albeit short story of the times. But Sylvia Townsend Warner is not satisfied with her heroine loss of self control so Lolly (as everyone calls Laura) starts getting eccentric (isn't that a marvelous word to use when describing someone who is not conforming to the expectations). Everyone is patient with her for awhile - until she meets someone (no, not that way) and decides that her life is her own and she is moving to the countryside - to a new place noone had ever heard of.

And that's where the novel gets a bit... crazy. One way to read it is that the man who helped her throw away the expectations was the Devil. The other way is that our Lolly got a bit touched in the head. Which I usually do not mind in novels but... this one is considered a feminist icon and it just looks a bit weird that the only way for a woman to get free and clear from expectation is either via a deal with the devil or by getting crazy. On the other hand, considering when the novel was set, that may have been really the only possible way for the story to work. If anything, I am surprised her brothers did not try to commit her into a hospital.

So did I like the novel as a whole? I am still not sure. I liked the language and I liked Lolly but the whole thing sounded like a bit of a cheap trick. Of course, I also live almost a century after the book was published and even longer since the time of the action and that is one period I had not read much from. From the little I had read though, that may have been the only way to get a book about a spinster who decides not to do what is expected to be published. And it made me want to read more from the author so there is that.

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LibraryThing member lisapeet

Wonderful writing and a great 1926 feminist take on witches, the devil, a woman's life of drudgery and obscurity—not outdated in the least, unfortunately, but we're fortunate to have this fabulous novel.

LibraryThing member BeyondEdenRock

Laura Willowes was a much loved daughter, she grew up happily in the country, and she became the kind of countrywoman whose life moved with the rhythms of nature in the way that lives had for generations. But when her beloved father died she became a ‘spare woman’ and her life was taken over by

her brothers and their wives.

Such was the way of the world in the 1920s, when Sylvia Townsend Warner told her story.

“Caroline spoke affectionately, but her thoughts were elsewhere. They had already journeyed back to London to buy an eiderdown for the bed in the small spare-room. If the washstand were moved towards the door, would it be possible to fit in a writing-table between it and the fire-place? Perhaps a bureau would be better, because of the extra drawers? Yes, that was it. Lolly could bring the little walnut bureau with the false handles on one side and the top that jumped up when you touched the spring by the ink-well. It had belonged to Lolly’s mother, and Lolly had always used it, so Sibyl could not raise any objections. Sibyl had no claim to it whatever, really. She had only been married to James for two years, and if the bureau had marked the morning-room wall-paper, she could easily put something else in its place. A stand with ferns and potted plants would look very nice.”

The world was changing though, I knew it and there was something in the tone, in the rhythm of the words that told me too. There was a wonderful mixture of delicate observation, wry knowingness and love for the story being told; all of that made it feel very special.

Laura accepted her family’s decision, accepted it as the natural way of things, and settled into a new life. She was absorbed by her family, and even her name was changed to Lolly, because one of one of her young nieces cannot pronounce “Laura” and that was the name she came out with instead. Nobody thought to as Laura if she minded. She was a wonderful aunt, she was loved, but she wasn’t valued.

“Caroline resigned herself to spending the rest of her evenings with Laura beside her. The perpetual company of a sister-in-law was rather more than she had bargained for. Still, there she was, and Henry was right—they had been the proper people to make a home for Laura when her father died, and she was too old now to begin living by herself. It was not as if she had had any experience of life; she had passed from one guardianship to another: it was impossible to imagine Laura fending for herself. A kind of pity for the unused virgin beside her spread through Caroline’s thoughts. She did not attach an inordinate value to her wifehood and maternity; they were her duties, rather than her glories. But for all that she felt emotionally plumper than Laura. It was well to be loved, to be necessary to other people. But Laura too was loved, and Laura was necessary. Caroline did not know what the children would do without their Aunt Lolly.”

As her nieces and nephews grew up Laura began to feel the gap in her life, and the country and its traditions began to call her back. All she could do though was fill the house with flowers. Until one magical day when the stars aligned, and Laura realised that she could have the life she wanted, a life of her own.

Sylvia Townsend Warner had painted her gradual awakening to the call of the countryside beautifully, and she makes Laura’s final realisation quite glorious:

“Laura looked at the bottled fruits, the sliced pears in syrup, the glistening red plums, the greengages. She thought of the woman who had filled those jars and fastened on the bladders. Perhaps the greengrocer’s mother lived in the country. A solitary old woman picking fruit in a darkening orchard, rubbing her rough fingertips over the smooth-skinned plums, a lean wiry old woman, standing with upstretched arms among her fruit trees as though she were a tree herself, growing out of the long grass, with arms stretched up like branches. It grew darker and darker; still she worked on, methodically stripping the quivering taut boughs one after the other.”

“As Laura stood waiting she felt a great longing. It weighed upon her like the load of ripened fruit upon a tree. She forgot the shop, the other customers, her own errand. She forgot the winter air outside, the people going by on the wet pavements. She forgot that she was in London, she forgot the whole of her London life. She seemed to be standing alone in a darkening orchard, her feet in the grass, her arms stretched up to the pattern of leaves and fruit, her fingers seeking the rounded ovals of the fruit among the pointed ovals of the leaves. The air about her was cool and moist. There was no sound, for the birds had left off singing and the owls had not yet begun to hoot. No sound, except sometimes the soft thud of a ripe plum falling into the grass, to lie there a compact shadow among shadows. The back of her neck ached a little with the strain of holding up her arms. Her fingers searched among the leaves.”

Laura knows then that she must answer the call of the country, and fate guides her to the village of Great Mop, in the heart of Buckinghamshire. He family are astonished, they protest, but she goes anyway. And she finds happiness, she finds her place in the world, in the country.

It was lovely to watch her quiet, simple transformation.

But then the story changes.

When Laura’s family intrude on her new life, when the balance is upset, the mystical thing that had been calling her towards her destiny became rather more tangible. And, for me, it didn’t quite work. The spirit of the story, the direction of the story was right, but it felt heavy-handed. The best books that dabble with things that may be real or may be fantastical are so captivating that I don’t stop to think about what is going on, and which it is. This part of the story didn’t quite catch me, it wasn’t quite subtle enough and I couldn’t love it as I’d loved what came before.

I came unstuck near the end the first time I read ‘Lolly Willowes’ but not this time

I realised that I might be judging the book a little unfairly, because I’m comparing it with books that were written so much later, and with many of the books that I love the best of all.

I have to cherish a book that, three years before Virginia Woolf published ‘A Room of One’s Own’, said:

“One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broom stick. It’s to escape all that, to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread a day ….”

And I found so much to love that it was easy to let go of small disappointments.

I loved the arc of the story, I loved the telling of the story, and I loved the spirit of the story.

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LibraryThing member jwhenderson

Sylvia Townsend Warner was a feminist author in England who began publishing with her first novel at about the time that Virginia Wool published her seminal essay, "A Room of One's Own"*. Warner ran in different circles and was friendly with a number of the "Bright young things" of the 1920s that

were famously satirized by Evelyn Waugh in his short novel Vile Bodies. Warner's first major success was this novel, Lolly Willowes, published in 1926.

Lolly Willowes is the story of a middle-aged spinster who moves to a country village to escape her controlling relatives and takes up the practice of witchcraft. The novel opens at the turn of the twentieth century, with Laura (Lolly) Willowes moving from Somerset to London to live with her brother, Henry, and his family. Her move comes in the wake of the death of Laura's father, Everard, with whom she lived with at the family home, Lady Place. Laura's other brother, James, moves into Lady Place with his wife and his young son, Titus, with the intention to continue the family's brewing business. However, James dies suddenly of a heart attack and Lady Place is rented out, with the view that Titus, once grown up, will return to the home and run the business.

Laura finds herself feeling increasingly stifled both by the obligations of being a live-in aunt and living in London. When shopping for flowers on the Moscow Road, Laura has an epiphany and realizes she must move to the country. Buying a guide book and map to the area, she decides upon the (fictional) village of Great Mop as her new home. Against the wishes of her extended family, Laura moves to Great Mop and finds herself entranced and overwhelmed by the chalk hills and beech woods. When out walking, she makes a pact with a supernatural force that she takes to be Satan, allowing her to remain in the Chilterns rather than return to her duties as an aunt.

In the meantime, Titus, having visited Laura, has decided he wants to move from his lodgings in Bloomsbury to Great Mop and be a writer, rather than inheriting the family business. Laura is frustrated by this but is able to call upon black magic to discourage Titus to the extent that he decides to get married and retreat to London. The denouement of the story leaves Laura acknowledging that the new freedom she has achieved comes at the expense of knowing that she belongs to the 'satisfied but profound indifferent ownership' of Satan.

Warner's writing style is sublime. She demonstrates a subtle humor leavened with unexpected turns of phrase that delighted this reader. Her take on this satirical comedy of manners incorporates elements of fantasy that represent, metaphorically, the plight of women in the era before they "have a room" of their own.

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LibraryThing member SigmundFraud

Lolly Willowes : Or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner is sited in rural England at the time of the First World War. I favor the mid century women writers such as Warner. The novel gets off to a great start but Part 2 and Part 3 lost me. The protagonist, a young unmarried woman lives

with her brother for about twenty-five years when she decides to go off on her own. She moves to a small nearby village and pursues her life but once she gets to the village and leads a solitudinous life she becomes boring to me. So I recommend this book with reservations.

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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd

the notion that she wouldn't just carry on that way indefinitely, and one day she picked an odd little village with nothing to recommend it but its odd little name--Great Mop-- and announced that she was going to move there. Leaving her "Aunt Lolly" persona behind, Miss Willowes settles in to Great Mop and gradually begins to know the villagers. Although she doesn't seem to fit in here any more than she did in London society, she is at peace with her situation until one day she comes home to find an inexplicable kitten in her rooms. Here the wonder and the strangeness truly begin. The moment the kitten grabs and bites Miss Willowes's hand, she realizes that she is a witch, and this kitten her familiar. Although she puts it that she has "made a compact with the devil" nothing about her story suggests a conscious decision to do that. (It isn't a spoiler to let you in on the fact that "the loving huntsman" of the subtitle is Satan, though not the horned satyr of so much popular culture. Rather he is a very ordinary looking gentleman who can disappear into his background, and who does not seem to move anyone to acts of sheer evil.) It just comes to her that now she is a witch. This passive acceptance of a fact so utterly outside the framework of this woman's prior existence struck a discord with me, and if I hadn't known it was coming (from reading blurbs on the cover and several reviews) I think I might have had one of those “WTH” moments and tossed the book aside. As it was, I kept reading, and I'm glad that I did, because Lolly's exploration of the world from her new perspective is really a joy. Her little conversation with Satan in the English countryside near the end of the book is just brilliant. Overall I was not as taken with this story as those who recommended it to me, but I give it 3 1/2 solid stars.

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LibraryThing member vplprl

Like Jane Austen before her, Warner knows that there are worse things in life than being a spinster beholding to her family. Despite the outrage her decision causes, Lolly Willowes decides to leave London and settle in the obscure, rural village of Great Mop. Slyly and with great affection, Warner

tells us just what those village ladies were up to on those moonlit nights. A welcome return to this fine novel first published in1926.

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LibraryThing member gakgakg

Can't a woman just get some peace without being treated like chattel by her well-intentioned family?

Apparently not without selling her soul to Satan.

Did she have other options? Would make for an interesting discussion.

LibraryThing member elam11

Not quite what I expected -- the much vaunted (in book summary and introduction) deal with the devil doesn't come until the final third of the book, and it's with such a soft touch that I wondered why everyone took Warner at her word that a deal indeed had been made!

Strong feminist message --

circled around for most of the book, then named explicitly at the very end in a monologue from Miss Willowes.

4.5 stars for descriptions of being among nature in the English countryside. A , would imagine I was there.

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LibraryThing member scroeser

Surprising and comforting.

LibraryThing member boredgames

pretty good narrative though i felt a bit disengaged by the end; i wonder if the film "The Witch" is directly inspired by this. written in a lively, anachronistically quite biting and contemporary manner belying its 1926 publication date

LibraryThing member SandDune

Laura Willowes (or Lolly as she is now called by all her relatives) has lived at Lady Place in Somerset all her life, but on her fathers’s death it is decided by her relatives that she would be much better going to live with her brother Henry and his wife Caroline in London:

‘Lolly ought to come

to them. London would be a nice change for her. She would meet nice people, and in London would have a better chance of marrying. Lolly was twenty-eight. She would have to make haste if she were going to find a husband before she was thirty.’

But Lolly is never interested in any of the men that are presented to her (or them her). The First World War comes and goes, and her nieces get married and have children of their own, and still Lolly remains in the house of her brother and sister in law, never living the life that she wants to live, or even knowing what life that might be. But at long last a chance encounter in a greengrocer’s shop sends her suddenly to live alone in the village of Great Mop in the Chilterns, much to the consternation of all. And after years of stultifying conventionality ministering to the needs of others, Lolly (or Laura, as she is now able to revert to her proper name) is finally able to focus on herself.

Written in 1926, this is a thoughtful book which looks at the options open to an unmarried woman in the first decades of the twentieth century and which comes to a surprising conclusion. It doesn’t end up where you expect it to at all.

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LibraryThing member mahallett

really enjoyed this. disappointing ending.

LibraryThing member Bookish59

I was surprised at how readable Warner's Lolly Willowes is; the words simply flowed. Described unmarried women's lives in the 20th Century as dependent and drudge-like. These women were expected to live with their brothers or sisters submissively caring for their families without recompense.

Many

like Lolly did so. But when Lolly reached a certain age, a restlessness caught up with her. She shows a rebellious, independent streak by moving out of London to a small country cottage despite her family's shock. Now able to do as she pleases, she is thrilled with her freedom. But then her nephew Titus comes calling expecting her to accommodate him. She is irritated and feels her family has re-captured her.

These first 2 parts of the book I understood. It is this last part which I find troubling. Seems to keep her freedom Lolly must make a deal with the devil. Of course people will do almost anything when desperate. But I don't think this is the right direction for Lolly or any woman to go.

To me it seems to be saying that if you aren't willing to comply with society's norms, you, single women are 'witches,' and bad and deserve only the devil for companionship. This is an egregious depiction of adult women who choose independence for themselves. They need to be heard, understood and loved, definitely not castigated, discouraged and disrespected.

What was Warner trying to say with this novel?

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LibraryThing member JulieStielstra

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. 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 she has a life that 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 trembled, 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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LibraryThing member pamelad

I found the main character to be annoyingly passive, so had minimal interest in how her life would turn out. Laura, called Lolly by her family, is a well-off spinster and could escape her dreary family any time she wants, but it's 1926 and it's hard for a woman to live independently, so she allows

herself to become an indispensable maiden aunt, her individuality ignored. Eventually she escapes to a small village where she is happy until her nephew Tobias arrives and takes over her life. To make Tobias move away, Laura accepts help from an unusual source. I found the ending to be ludicrous, and it made me think even less of Laura. No-one likes a manipulative whiner!

The points this book makes about women's independence may have been relevant and interesting in 1926 when it was first published.

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