For the Love of Willie

by Agnes Owens

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Genres: Fiction, Scotland, British Literature

Hardcover

First published July 16, 1998

About the author

Agnes Owens was a Scottish author. She was born in Milngavie in 1926 and spent most of her life on the west coast of Scotland. She has been married twice and raised seven children, also working as a cleaner, typist and factory worker.

Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_O...

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover of this slender novel is quite intriguing. The romantic tableau - a couple curled up to each other in a haze of sepia – is delightfully deceptive, as For the Love of Willie isn’t a saccharine love story but a rather tough tale.



Peggy, a middle-aged woman who has been living in a mental institution for women for a long time, attempts to jot down her life story into a novel, of which she shares parts with another resident next to her cot in the dormitory, a haughty, dependent old lady, nicknamed the Duchess. Each chapter alternates between past and present, jumping between fragments reconstructing Peggy’s past as a teenager girl during WWII, focussing on her naïve infatuation with her shifty employer, the married shopkeeper Willie Roper and its tribulations and consequences on her life - and the harrowing present in the mental ward, characterised by Peggy’s teasing love-hate relationship with the Duchess and the staff’s contempt for and neglect of the patients, administering them numbing treatments and breaking the will of the residents by disgracefully disciplining them into mindless obedience.

If this might sound bleak, the story however doesn’t indulge in miserablism. Written in a simple and sober language, sparked with lively dialogues and acute observations on human nature and life and perceptively criticising the treatment of the ones deviant to social norms, the tone of the novel is all but depressing, as it is brimming with dark mordant wit which often made me grin. Despite the harshness of Peggy’s life conditions in both her youth as in the institution, Peggy’s spirit isn’t broken, her stamina is adamant and her mind seems as sharp as a needle - in a sense reminding of Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, she seems perfectly sane - or at least no more or less insane than the majority of people not put away in an institution. Through a stream of diligently offered clues and piecemeal information, we get to wonder why Peggy ended up there and how her present and her past are connected. With merciless kindness, Owens serves a smashing climax in the last sentence, casting the past of both Peggy and the Duchess into an unexpected light.

Whatever life might have in store for us, a good sense of humour can help us through during dark times and prevent us from getting crushed, so this tragi-comic tale on love, repressive sexual morality, resilience and wisdom how to provide meaning to life magnificently illustrates.


(Shirley Baker)

Before I came across this alluringly pretty little book in the local library, I had never heard of the Scottish writer Agnes Owens (1926-2014). Reading an obituary on her after finishing this tiny gem of novel I am quite wowed - it is hard not to be impressed by a woman having raised seven children who got to write after joining a creative writing group for the sake of having an evening out of the house, combining writing with working part time as cleaner and having her debut published at the age of 58. A true working-class hero, writing about working-class life – I don’t think I have often encountered such in previous reads. If you wonder if this is relevant, I think it is. That writing and getting published from working-class background was far from evident in the 70-80ies and still isn’t now, is an issue Kit de Waal addresses poignantly in this essay and article and also in this BBC reportage where she investigates why so few novelists are from working-class backgrounds and why it matters who gets to write novels and get them published. Even when one gets to live in a rather middle-class style later in life, a working-class background for many ostensibly continues to linger in the psyche.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peggy is a middle aged woman who is in a mental hospital with an elderly roomate called the “duchess” Peggy is writing a manuscript about her life and wants the duchess to read it .. these two really were humorous.
This little story goes back and forth from the present to Peggy’s past as a young girl and the things that happened to her.
I could really feel Peggy’s emotions from her girlhood and the story came to a shocking end.

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

Set in a cottage hospital for females with mental problems, this story begins as Peggy, a woman now middle-aged, is sitting on the veranda with a woman Peggy refers to only as “the Duchess,” when she spots a man in the bus shelter below. She mentions this, saying he looks like a man she used to know, and in answering her friend’s questioning her ability to remember anything, Peggy lets it be known that she is writing a book. Of course, the Duchess wants to know what it’s about.

”’About my life before they put me inside,’ says Peggy. She adds wistfully, ‘I had one, you know.’”

Alternating between her past, beginning during her young teenage years during WWII and the present, her days in the hospital, she slowly unveils the story of those days from the past that haunt her. The year she began working, delivering morning newspapers owing to a crush she has on the shopkeeper, Willie Roper, the repercussions that followed, and the way that influenced the course of her life. The present focus alternates between the staff, their treatment of the patients that seems to vary from condescension to neglect and mistreatment.

At 122 pages, this was a lovely little tragi-comic story which includes themes of abuse, war, love and friendship. We learn Peggy’s story as we wander with her through her past, and listen to her slowly share how she came to be in this place. Owens saves the best for last, with a phenomenal conclusion, which left me wanting to read more by this author.

Many thanks to my goodreads friend Ilse, whose lovely review convinced me to read this.

Ilse’s review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colin Pie here. MJ Nicholls has ordered me to apologise on his behalf for the diminished reading activity among his team of highly skilled and unpaid book goblins this month. This is due in part to the unveiling of three affiliated MJ Nicholls subsidiaries: 1) The MJ Nicholls Association for Patronising Lectures on Experimental Fiction (TMJAPLEF). 2) The MJ Nicholls Department for Digressive Comedic Reviews with Little Relevant Content (TMJNDDCRLRC). 3) The MJ Nicholls House for Self-Referential Whimsy Over Substantial Textual Analysis (TMJNHSRWSTA). I have been made the CEO of the MJ Nicholls Centre for Tiresome Acronym Jokes That Aren’t Jokes (MJCTAJTAJ), which incorporates TMJNHSRWSTA.

1. Distracting Relevance. This is a novel by Agnes Owens, a retired cleaner from Milngavie, in which teenage girl Polly gets knocked up by a sleazy shop owner. A second narrative told fifty-or-so years in the future describes Polly’s attempts to write her life story in a hospital ward after a lifetime of serious mental health problems. Lean and unflinching prose from this surprising and consistently overlooked talent. This text is part of the MJ Nicholls Repository for Unknown Scottish Fiction of Little Interest to the Predominantly American Goodreads Demographic (no acronym available).

2. More About Colin Pie. I confess, I am looking to establish The Colin Pie Association for More Reviews About Colin Pie (TCPMRACP) within the MJ Nicholls & Affiliated Pseudonyms Reading Experience (TMJNAAPRE). I have secured funding from the Manny Rayner Institute for Technical Reviews About Chess No-one Reads (MRITRCNR) and the Paul Bryant Centre for Short Parodies of Unread Books for Fifty or More Easy Likes (PBSPUBFMEL) and the TCPMRACP should be in operation within four years. (If we secure planning permission from Jeff Daly first. I hear he can be bought).

3. And Finally. Who needs MJ Nicholls anyway? His days are numbered in the current economic climate. When all publishing stops in 2013 and we revert to wartime measures of rationing and water conservation in a desperate attempt to stimulate growth (as opposed to shutting down off-shore tax havens for billionaires), all literature will be an irrelevance. All that will remain are the reviewers pouring over the last two millennia of literature in witty and amusing ways, as predicted in this prophetic review. The Day of the Reviewers is coming—and I intend to cash in! Come get a piece of the Colin.

P.S. This is being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up in a secondhand book shop because it is such a pretty little hardback. I enjoyed it - the narrator is a really interesting character, incarcerated in a mental institution for women, looking back on her a year during the war when she was a teenager. It has a brilliant surprise near the end that I didn't see coming at all, but overall the book didn't carry enough punch to make up for its size. The dialogue is great, as is the story, but I needed something more: description perhaps. I often had no idea of what the places the narrator was in were like.
Enjoyable.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

After enjoying Bad Attitudes, I wanted to read more by Agnes Owens and the library obliged with For the Love of Willie. It is another sharp, witty, and neatly constructed novella with an impressive sting in the tail. The narrative slips between past and present. Peggy the protagonist has been in an institution for decades when she decides to write a novel about her teenage romance. The fact that she's writing a novel rather than a memoir serves to further throw Peggy's reliable narrator status into doubt. Are the scenes of her life during the Second World War filtered through her memory? It seems so, although the reader can also see the tragedy and comedy beyond Peggy's own youthful feelings about events. Owens' particular skill with dialogue is very much in evidence:

"So you did have a husband?" said Peggy. "Well, it's more than I did. Though they say you don't miss what you've never had. What I miss is dancing. I would love to have done a waltz round a floor in a dance-hall you sometimes see in old-fashioned films. I always thought I was cut out to be a dancer."
The old woman stared at her blank-eyed as she went on, "I remember tap dancing on the floor of our scullery. Being a stone floor it was good for that. I was only fourteen at the time and thought one day-" She broke off. "What's the point of talking about it. It doesn't do any good and anyway it won't be long now."
"What won't?" said the duchess.
"Until they turf us out. I heard from the canteen woman this place is going to close soon and she's usually right about everything."
"I don't understand," said the duchess. "How can they put me out if I've nowhere to go?"
"She said they'll give us a flat to share with someone. How would you like that?"
"I wouldn't like it at all," said the duchess. "I can't eat, I can't walk and now they tell me I've got dementia. How can I possibly share a flat?"
"Don't ask me," said Peggy. "Ask the sister. You know how she always listens."
"I won't bother," said the duchess, detecting a note of sarcasm in Peggy's tone. "I know you're just trying to get me into trouble. I think you're a very wicked woman."

Life in the institution and during wartime are both deftly sketched via brief scenes. The final twist was in the realm of what I expected, yet still macabre and shocking. Based on reading just two of her books, Owens has a similar tone and readability to Muriel Spark but her characters are from much less salubrious places.

[Immy Stannard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adding to this review to say I re read it again almost exactly 2 years later and fuck it’s so good, the fact that it has 40 reviews on here is criminal - I literally just found it in an Oxfam (I think) bookshop seriously though such a brilliant book



Such a short but powerful novella, only about 120 pages! I couldn’t put it down and read it in an afternoon, I read on the blurb that it was a tragi-comedy and I can’t say I agree, personally i found it so sad!! Peggy and the women are so isolated by their status and gender, they’re consistently mistreated by the adults in their lives. Their stories are representative of so many young girls not dissimilar to my age living now and in the 20th century!! May have shed a tear or two at the end. Wow. But is it also a story that shows a cat can solve anything? Who knows

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

really enjoyed this! have been meaning to start reading agnes owen’s books for ages & this was a great introduction

[Montana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loooooved

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the Love of Willie was the fourth Owens novella which I read, and was by far my favourite. It is incredibly human, and the third person omniscient perspective which has been used works incredibly well. Peggy and her naiveties were achingly realistic at times, and her story was readable and interesting. The plot is a little predictable in places, but the shock of the ending more than makes up for this. A great Owens to begin with.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A seemingly simple read that packs a punch. Here's my review on my blog:
http://reidsreadings.blogspot.com/201...

[Eilidh Fyfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

brilliant ! Agnes does it again and again, all is bleak and brilliant

[Robyn White · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books where nothing happens and then suddenly everything shocks you. Loved it

[Kate W · Rating 4 out of 5]

what skill to hold us until the very final word like that

[Yasmin M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short, sharp novel that packs real emotional complexity into so few pages. On the surface it’s a familiar setup — a young woman falls for an older man, chasing something like a father figure, and ends up in over her head — but what stayed with me was Peggy’s agency: she knows exactly what she wants, which is to keep her own baby, and that clarity of purpose is the most compelling part of the book.

The asylum sections deserve their own mention. They’re so well done at conveying the discomfort and wrongness of that environment that I found myself wanting to rush past them, back to the “real” story — but that’s a testament to how effective the writing is, not a flaw. It also didn’t feel redundant coming after A Working Mother; it’s covering different ground entirely. The Duchess character was a particular highlight in these chapters.

What strikes me most is Owens’ range. She raised seven children and only started writing after attending an evening creative writing class as a way to carve out a little space for herself away from the domestic grind — and that detail is what actually reminded me of The Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes, not Peggy’s story but Owens’ own life: a woman claiming a private, interior space for herself amid the demands of a large family.

Her novels are short, but that’s no reflection of ease — this is some of the best writing I’ve read in a long time, and I’m glad to have more of her work ahead of me.

[Jank Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a mental institution for women, Peggy writes her life story for the only person who will listen/read ‘the dutchess’. The asylum sections are sharp and blood minded with Owen’s uncanny cold compassionate style sharply moving things along. The tightness and stripped back prose combined with the setting are more Waiting for Godot and Endgame than One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

The novel within the novel / her life story is a hardcore tragi-comedy: minors being seduced by elder shopkeepers, the things working class folk do to show love and safe face. Honest, unsentimental and modestly from the heart - Agnes Owen’s should be held up as one of the great Scottish writers of any period, period. Scotlands answer to Flannery O’Connor!!

4.5*

[Eylül Çetinbaş · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was a great book! Simple language, a subject which seems simple too but of course not. Emotions were so intense that you can feel the sadness as if you are really in it. I'm sorry that Its finished, would be great to read the further story!

[Hannah Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

more people need to read agnes owens!! her life story is fascinating and so much of it graces her fiction as well! this was fantastic - so entertaining but so much effortless commentary on class, patriarchy and on the general dismissal of women. brilliant!

[maxgo · Rating 4 out of 5]

very impressed, thoroughly engaged through the very last page

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

i see my future and it is bleak
very waiting for godot

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and I love her writing. The book was quite humorous at times but also dark. She does not write long flowery sentences. She gets to the point.

The novels I have read so far of hers are not really novels but more like novellas.

This was Agnes Owens’ fourth novel. Below are her 7 novels listed in order in which they were published.

1. Gentlemen of the West [1984; Separately written stories that were published as chapters in a novel.]
2. Like Birds in the Wilderness [1987]
3. A Working Mother [1994]
4. For the Love of Willie [1998]
5. Bad Attitudes [2004
6. Jen’s Party [2004]
7. People Like That: The Collected Stories [1996]

I’ve read ‘Gentlemen of the West’ (4.5 stars), ‘A Working Mother’ (4.5 stars), and now ‘For the Love of Willie’ (5 stars). I think highly of her writing…I love it and will miss when I have read all of her oeuvre. Polygon has been reissuing her works and in September of this year (2026) will be re-issuing their remaining volumes: ‘Bad Attitudes’, ‘Jen’s Party’, and ‘People Like That: The Collected Stories’.

Here is a bio of hers from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_O...

Here is a synopsis of the novella taken from the back cover of the polygon re-issue:
• Peggy is 16, ambitious and wants to get a job to help her rise above her current predicament. Soon, she is employed at Willie Roper’s corner shop. But before long, her situation goes from bad to worse as she falls in loves with her married, older employer.
• Looking back to her misspent youth, Peggy, now in a psychiatric hospital, is turning her teenage exploits into a romance novel and is trying to get her bedfellow, the duchess, to read the manuscript — but she would rather read a Mills & Boon. (from JimZ: Mills & Boon is a legendary publishing house famous worldwide for escapist romance fiction)
• As we read both sides of the tale, we learn about the fate of young Peggy and how she came to be in the duchess’ company; the novel culminates in a surprising narrative punch (JimZ: Yes, I can vouch for the veracity of that last sentence!)

Reviews:
• I imagine in the next year or so once more people start reading the re-issued books of hers there will be more reviews from literary bloggers and periodicals, but as for now there was only one…. And this reviewer compared Owens to Beryl Bainbridge. I think I need to read a novel or two of Beryl Bainbridge’s! https://swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpres...
• Interesting review/article about the author in which all her works are mentioned as well as her biography and some of her personal live… https://democratonline.net/2021/03/10...