Book review: Lolly Willowes

We've had this one on our shelves for time out of mind: perhaps M had it before I met her. And finally I decided to read it, in a rather down frame of mind on a day when I expected such: a Saturday when I had little that I needed to do, after a Friday night's drinking and curry with Mark and Paul. 

I'm not sure what I thought it was about, before: the title is perhaps deliberately ambiguous or misleading; "Willowes" put me in mind of the tree, and maybe I thought of a river bank. But no: Willowes is a surname, and Lolly is the name by which Aunt Laura is known. And it is a book about the life of LW: from her childhood, to her adulthood, to her rebellion from comfortable but dull life into the countryside. Having subsequently read some of STW's life, it could perhaps be seen as instructions to herself, or to people like her. STW is a cultured person and this shows in her writing; and a small part of the charm of the book is the small touches of life it describes in 1920's London: the small shops, the chrysanthemums; in this it resembles the more august Proust.

Weirdly, LW decides to move to the Chilterns¹, inspired by a spray of beech leaves from the florist; and after a while she settles into the landscape and ceases to try to interpret it, symbollically throwing her guidebook into a well; later, and even more weirdly, she decides she has become a witch, acquires a black kitten as familiar, goes to the Sabbath that all the village has been going to, and meets Satan in the guise of woodsman, gamekeeper or gardener; and is at peace. She decides to sleep out in the woods. But Satan is an odd sort of Satan: more wood spirit or Pan than evil.

The ending, then, has veered wildly away from the conventional beginning; I presume that was her intention; see again her life-story. It sort-of works as a novel (providing you're unfamiliar with sleeping out of doors) and is enjoyable and I think worth reading.

For reference, I've also read (via M) "The corner that held them" which can be said to have a similar theme, though set in a middle-ages nunnery.

Notes

1. Not far from Berkhamstead, where I grew up; I remember the beech woods I walked.