Cover of Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

by Barbara Comyns · 1950

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"I told Helen my story and she went home and cried." So begins Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. But Barbara Comyns's beguiling novel is far from tragic, despite the harrowing ordeals its heroine endures.

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Sophia is twenty-one and naive when she marries fellow artist Charles. She seems hardly fonder of her husband than she is of her pet newt; she can't keep house (everything she cooks tastes of soap); and she mistakes morning sickness for the aftereffects of a bad batch of strawberries. England is in the middle of the Great Depression, and the money Sophia makes from the occasional modeling gig doesn't make up for her husband's indifference to paying the rent. Predictably, the marriage falters; not so predictably, Sophia's artlessness will be the very thing that turns her life around.

Genre
literary fictionliterary fictionMore like thisLess of thishistorical fictionhistorical fictionMore like thisLess of thiscoming of agecoming of ageMore like thisLess of this
Themes
feminismfeminismMore like thisLess of thisrelationshipsrelationshipsMore like thisLess of thiswomenwomenMore like thisLess of this
Setting
20th century20th centuryMore like thisLess of thisBritishBritishMore like thisLess of thisEnglandEnglandMore like thisLess of thisLondonLondonMore like thisLess of thisEuropeanEuropeanMore like thisLess of this
Subject
biographybiographyMore like thisLess of this
Audience
adult
Length
medium · 223 pages

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