![]() ![]() ![]() A village which seems always to have existed and which, we are confident, will continue existing long after the final page. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is but a single chapter in the ongoing life of a village. ![]() Thus, while we readers are not privy to the details of the flood directly preceding the first chapter, and though by the end of the book we may have the sense that the narrative is incomplete, ultimately the entire history is of little importance. It is as if the reader has stumbled, disoriented, into the middle of the story: the first paragraph tosses us right into the aftermath of a flood, as a small English village is waking up to “the wonderful new world that had come in the night.” This “newness,” however, is not unlike that of the seasons orienting the lives of the villagers each phase may hold its own sense of wonder, and yet there is an overarching rhythm, a cyclical architecture which makes past and future largely variations on the same theme. The opening scene of Barbara Comyns’ Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead seems almost biblical, but in this bible there are a few missing books. ![]()
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