Comyns, Barbara. Out of the Red into the Blue. London: Heinemann, 1960. 202 pp. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. FIRST EDITION [not for sale].

In an introduction to one of her novels, the author Brian Evenson writes that Comyns strikes "an impossible balance between accuracy, wonder, and disgust." 

The work of Barbary Comyns, who indeed has written some very strange and dark novels (levitating daughters; human skin chairs; a poisoned village; and the more realistic horror of "the poverty") is not easy to find anymore in original print--hence, hard to part with. 

This is her memoir, about her escape from poverty in post-war London to an equally poor-stricken but more bohemian life on Ibiza (named Ciriaco in the book, perhaps in an attempt to save the island from British tourism). It's wonderfully written with a Comyn-esque dab of quirkiness, like the strange habits of Spanish plumbing, and a potential rabies infection brought by a backward-walking dog. Ultimately, though, it is a book about the simple life, pre-airbnb: blissful and harsh at once.

Not selling (or maybe: make me an offer...)