Comfort me with Apples

by Nell Leyshon

Winner Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright.
Shortlisted for Susan Smith Blackburn Award.

Autumn, and the orchard is full of cider Beauty of Bath, Kingston Black and Glory of the West.

Inside the farmhouse, the rule of the matriach Irene is challenged when her estranged daughter returns and her middle-aged son, beginning to tire of being tied to the unprofitable farm, grows restless.

A richly evocative tale about life in our changing rural landscape.

78 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

Nell Leyshon is a British playwright and novelist born in Glastonbury, Somerset. At the age of eleven, she moved to a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels. Her first attempts at novels were with a baby on her lap. She burned a lot of the early writing, and finally started on Black Dirt, which was her first published novel.

While struggling to write prose, she got a commission from BBC Radio 4 to write a radio drama, "Milk", which won the Richard Imison Award for best first radio play. Her second play, The Farm, was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award.

Her novel, Black Dirt was published in 2005 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize.

Her third novel, The Colour of Milk, was published in May 2012 and has won the Prix de l’Union Interalliee and was nominated for the Prix Femina in France and was was voted the book of the year in Spain. Her most recent novel, "Memoirs of a Dipper" was published in 2015.

Reviews

[Kinga · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read this play because today I'm gonna see it on stage in Barcelona. Well, it's all right but nothing special, really. Since I grew up in a very closed village I can relate to those problems the characters are having. I don't know if the author's aim was to make Irene a ruthless matriarch who didn't want her son to be happy, let alone, to recognize that she even has a daughter, but I can understand her. She is a possessive mother but I've always thought that in order to be one, your child must be very weak otherwise the mother couldn't tie hm/her to herself. So, on one side, we have Irene who is strong and possessive... and old (which makes us understand a lot of things she's done). On the other side we have her children, the twins: Roy and Brenda. Roy is weak, mama's boy, Brenda is strong. Roy couldn't confront her mother and lost the love of his life. But he stays on the farm and bags the apples and just wait and see if something happens without doing anything for it. I haven't felt any sympathy for him. Brenda seems strong and determined but we really don't know her. We know she tried to help her brother be happy with Linda 20 years ago. But what happened three years ago? What made her go away? Was it something concrete or she just got fed up? We don't know and I'm asking, why the characters keep referring to it then? Somehow Brenda couldn't get my sympathy either. We have Linda and Len left. Linda seems the simple village girl whose life got broken 20 years ago, but she did what she could with the broken pieces and now she will have a slightly boring, quiet life with that "what if...?" in her mind. And here we have Len. About whom we don't know anything really. What's his purpose in the play? Is he retarded or he's just simple? In spite of these question marks, I like Len. He's good and kind hearted. And loves Irene who is my favourite in this play. Yes, she had a hard life, she did what she could with it and just because she loved her son too much she is the bad woman in the play. I don't think it is that simple. She had to grow up very fast, she worked hard, like a man, she lives in a rural village full of tales and superstitions and what we see of Irene is the result of her life but not the road that get her there. THerefore I coulnd't judge her.

[Rachel Saper · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m normally not turned off by dark and depressing, but this was bleak and nothing ever changes. Did the playwright want everyone to feel hopeless?