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      Our spoons came from Woolworths

      by Barbara Comyns
      Published
      Jan 1983
      Main Genre
      General Fiction General Fiction
      Rating
      Pages
      223
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      About This Book

      A young female artist faces poverty, sexism, and a marriage gone awry in this "tragic, comic, and completely bonkers" novel set in Depression-era London (The Observer).

      "I defy anyone to read the opening pages and not to be drawn in, as I was . . . Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else." —Maggie O'Farrell, bestselling author of Hamnet

      "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.

      Sophia is 21 and naïve 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.

      Genres & Themes

      Genres

      General Fiction

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      Formats & Editions

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      Paperback

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      Paperback
      First Edition Jan 1983 Dial Press ISBN13 9780385279604 ISBN10 0385279604
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      Paperback
      Jan 1983 Virago Press Ltd. ISBN13 9780860683537 ISBN10 0860683532
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      Paperback
      Jul 2013 Little, Brown ISBN13 9781844089277 ISBN10 1844089274
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      Trade Paperback
      Nov 2015 New York Review of Books ISBN13 9781590178966 ISBN10 1590178963
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      eBook

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      eBook
      Oct 2015 NYRB Classics ISBN10 B00TCI407K
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      eBook
      Nov 2015 New York Review Books ISBN13 9781590178973 ISBN10 1590178971
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      Audio

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      Audible
      Dec 2012 AudioGO Ltd ISBN10 B00ALRNWUW
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      Large Print

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      Hardcover
      Jan 2002 Chivers ISBN13 9780754046905 ISBN10 0754046907
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