Comyns, Barbara. Out of the Red into the Blue. London: Heinemann, 1960. 202 pp. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. FIRST EDITION [currently 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 mundane horrors of "the poverty") is not so easy to find anymore in original print. 

This is a 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, probably 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 inflicted by a backward-walking dog. Ultimately, though, it is a book about the simple life, pre-airbnb: blissful and harsh at the same time.

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