Lolly Willowes (Penguin Modern Classics)

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I was immediately struck by Townsend Warner's ability to switch tones: from Austen-alike social comedy to a quasi-mystical sublimation in the natural world to a frantic, anxious, almost neurotic sense of being hunted, to an imaginative dream-like, surreal state that ends the book. In literature, I will always pass over the path of stagnant entitlement for that of pain; it's far more interesting that way.

We even see her reject her suitors, one in a particularly amusing way as she suggests he may be a werewolf. I can’t think of a better way to describe it, and before I read Lolly Willowes, I didn’t have that word either.Not that we should be putting authors into very fixed boxes, but a degree of categorisation can be useful for potential readers if they’re looking to try someone new.

I blame everything that Lolly Willowes rebels against in this book for the fact that I didn’t really meet my dad until four years ago. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. And well done for not giving too much away ;) I’ve read this so many times, and wrote a chapter of my DPhil on it – her writing is so beautiful and thoughtful. Today, Townsend Warner holds her place in this series as a proto-feminist who is also a major minor classic. Da Londra si trasferisce a Great Mop, paesino sperduto e poco conosciuto, dove a poco a poco riesce a identificare e a definire quell’ansia che la assale sempre più spesso.

Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! Magical omniscience in a human character is all very well, but the utmost certainty that is never countered or translated into self-reflexivity does not feed my desire for development. Well, there they were, there they are, child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging washed dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion each other's silly conversation, and listening to men talking together in the way that men talk and women listen.