A Well Full of Leaves

by Elizabeth Myers

A Well Full of Leaves is about a family of four children growing up somewhere in the north of England, with an utterly vile mother who is cruel to her children, self-centred, and deplorable.

It isn’t everyone who has a mother like ours. She was a specialist whose specialities never touched the kind, the gentle, or the constructive. She was at her best when she was toppling the entire scene. All her dislike of us and the world in general was extended into whatever she was doing. Under her hands soapsuds were angry, clothes sneered, steam menaced, crockery raved…

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Nature, Family, Coming Of Age

253 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Elizabeth Myers (1912 – 1947) was an English writer whose tragically early death from tuberculosis at the age of 34 years robbed denied her readers and admirers of one of the most promising writers to emerge from the war years. She was a formidable and original literary talent as is evident from the few offerings of her short literary life. She is perhaps best known for her first novel, ‘A Well Full of Leaves’ (1943) although her other two novels, ‘The Basilisk of St James Square’ (1945) and ‘Mrs Christopher’ (1946) met with a good deal of critical acclaim, the later being made into a film in 1951 under the title of ‘Blackmailed’. As well, Elizabeth wrote several volumes of short stories, including ‘Good Beds – Men Only’ and ‘Thirty Stories’ and a collection of letters (the last two volumes being edited and published posthumously by her husband, Littleton Powys).

She was a wonderful correspondent and her letters to such contemporaries as Walter de la Mare, Richard Church, John Cowper Powys and Eleanor Farjeon published in ‘The Letters of Elizabeth Myers’ (1951) make fascinating reading and give an insight into her life as she struggled with her health and her literary ambition.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this Persephone book because the premise sounded extremely interesting—the story follows four children into adulthood as they grow up with a spiteful and abusive mother and a weak milksop of a father.

Looking back, the story is interesting, but the cumbersome writing completely prevented me from becoming engrossed in it. It is so overwritten and flowery that I found myself rolling my eyes. The characters talk in a pretentious faux-intellectual way, making none of them seem quite real, and the descriptions are verbose to the point of being annoying.

At one point, Steve—a young guy who wasn’t allowed to be educated past fourteen—actually says: “Not only have I no surplusage of Nilotic fecundity[..]”

I don't understand the point when authors do this. The effect is almost always that the characters fail to be believable, and while I know we're supposed to feel bad that someone of Steve's intelligence has been denied further education, I think that could have been achieved without him sounding like one of the most impenetrable textbooks.

I also think—while the mother is undeniably awful—it would have had a stronger effect if the author didn't seem to be confusing poverty with parental neglect at times. Some of the problem is clearly the lack of parental love and support, but some (such as being unable to eat meringues or go to university) are beyond the parents’ control.

Another thing is that I found the mother by far the most interesting character in the book and I longed for a closer look at her past and the explanations for her actions. It may well be my distinctly modern view—and my view as a mother—but I was deeply curious about this toxic and foul-tempered creature, who seemed intent on spiting her children. Why? The way she is described—constantly flying off the handle and unable to control herself—suggests mental illness, and I think a modern audience can't help but wonder what role her totally useless husband plays in all this. Of course, he is pretty much redeemed and forgiven.

I did find one conclusion insightful. The book wonders how much of an effect a selfish and abusive parent has upon a child and answers, I think, truthfully: it depends very much on the personality of the child in question. Some will shake it off and go on to build meaningful lives, while others will be forever consumed by it.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Myers died at the age of 34 from T.B. She left behind her three novels and a pile of short stories. Her husband was Littleton C. Powys, brother of John Cooper Powys.

She is entirely buried. Almost nothing can be found about her on the internet, and all of her novels are out of print. It seems particularly strange that this, a Penguin paperback which went through at least 5 printings in the 1940's, has vanished so completely.

On the strength of the talent on display in this, her first novel, both her early death and the burial of her books, has deprived us of much great writing.

Dorothy Richardson liked it very much, and mentioned it in her letters, which was enough to inspire me to try and hunt down a copy. Cheap ones are pretty easy to come by on the internet, if you take the time to look.

I think the best way to get a sense of her style, and her mythologies of Nature, is with a couple of longish quotes...

From page 11:

"Thirteen is not a bad age to be. You have got over the shock of hearing about sex. You have even come to see the decent fittingness of it, the dignity, the sublime outlet for tenderness. And yet, and yet, you know that nothing will ever quite take the place of the world that has gone, the world that suddenly receded when you got knowledge and so lost wisdom.

And if you are lucky-young as I was, you grasp then the shape of the battle to come. You see that the fight will not be for power or riches, beauty or learning, or a long pro­cession of lovers. You see that it is to find the way back to being a little child again.

Aye! You’ve got to grow up to become as a child again.

You’ve got to learn by unlearning: you’ve got to imagine, not to know!

But now I moved forward into my little paradise of a dell, and began touching the leathery mounds of leaves, and rocking the buttercups. I held my breath to see jolly crimson beetles rollicking wildly among the damp roots, winged seeds floating on the wind, pigeons’ dropped feathers, and the bizarre small skeletons of mice and birds.

A kind of cosmic shorthand was written everywhere for those to decipher who would, resplendent in forgotten dew-drops, in sunstarts and wing-gleamings; in the tapestry of the rhododendrons with their strong reek; in the rustlings of rats and worms and an estrayent toad from the pond; in rain stains and drippings; in the lawless grass; in the withered bluebells that had flowed in sapphire thousands under the trees in the springtime; in the crimped and fluted leaves; in the aromatic smell of the tansies; in queer blights on tree-trunks; in cobwebs swinging between branches; in a lone fleshy marigold; in twigs and dust and moss and stones. All these things gave off messages going deeper than life."



From page 65:

... The wind was not just a casual noise to be swallowed up and forgotten with the other noises of the street. It had risen in the thin blown-glass of waves meeting a far-off shore; it had travelled from beaches where the sea slid forward and fled back again, grinding the shells to sand; this wind had boomed in slippery caves with hanging seaweeds for aeolian harps; it had blown across wild heaths setting tatted winter weeds jigging, careered through copses and wild-wood and quiet country cemeteries where tombstones listened to it impassively in the moonlight; it reached the towns, roaring round the theatres and churches, past shut shops where quails and shrimps and sheep's brains and forced strawberries were all quietly waiting to be bought and devoured and so become the blood and thoughts of men and women. And it came at last to shabby streets like our own, shrieking aghast through leagues of brick and hovels, whipping the waters of lonely, warehouse-enclosed canals into long stiff ridges of black cream, and finally going off blustering and spent to the hills beyond the town.

And this little gaslit room of ours, this ugly domestic interior, fraught with rags and pain, the chairs, the carpet, the shush-shushing fire, the ceiling – all listening to the truculence and idiocy of the mortal event going on – all these projected against the immensity of the wind and the night and the starry heavens, were reduced to what they really were - a few unkind hours that would pass, and could not affect or change the immutability of those external essences pressing round us on all sides, asking only to be recognised and promising happiness beyond all understanding in return.

These were not the thoughts of a child who had known every security; they were the inarticulate thoughts of a child who had never known a minute of security, and they would have never come at all without that insecurity."


I think this should give you an idea, and hopefully a desire to read the rest.

One can, I think, read the narrator's ecstatic bliss, her sense of wonder and one-ness with the natural world, as a legacy of her abusive childhood, as a coping mechanism, as something we are not meant to read as a New Age lecture direct from the mind and beliefs of the author. That is how I read it anyway, not least because, though she is absolutely right that the universe is One, and that there is not separation between me and the tree I pass, I don't see anything transcendent in this fact.

I might add more to this review at a later date, as she deserves it, but am simply too tired and busy at present to do more. Hopefully one of you will get a copy and write the review this deserves.

[Nicholas Beck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sublime, breathtaking writing from an author who died far too young. Her descriptions of nature are so visionary and so well written you'll without doubt be tempted to look at the world around you with a different perspective. I can't help thinking that Elizabeth Myers is so receptive to all that surrounds her in the natural world because of her own illness, life might be short so live it to it's fullest with a solid core of belief in yourself that cannot be shaken. Indeed her characters react in extremely different ways to an upbringing that is so emotionally bereft of any comfort that her younger brother is set on a path that winds deeper and deeper into darkness. There is redemption of a kind even for him however with his sister as a potential example of how to cope with the vicissitudes of life. The Kirkus review critically mentions the romanticism at the end as a drawback, I can't help thinking that this is a representation of Myers' marriage to Littleton Powys (perhaps incorrectly). If anything my one criticism of this novel is the completely unsympathetic portrayal of the mother, there seems little if any shades of grey (at the most a hint in one paragraph)in this portrayal.

[lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And, in the very act of lifting eyes to stars, or drawing the winey wind into lungs, a person’s life is thrillingly amplified by participating in strange, subtle pangs and rumors of the expectations and raptures of all who’ve ever gazed on stars, or breathed deep of the wind, ever since men could breathe at all."

I have yet to be disappointed by a Persephone book, and this was no exception. I was drawn to this particular novel, one of Persephone's latest, after they recommended it as an autumnal read, which was so spot-on; reading it this time of year really enriched the experience.

The book opens on a family of four children, and, as the years pass, focuses in on its the younger two, Laura and Steve, the latter of whom suffers constant beratement and physical violence at the hands of the children's deeply unhappy, deeply vile mother, who never wanted Steve in the first place.

With each chapter, another few years go by, and you slowly get to see Laura and Steve transition into adulthood and begin to make their own lives, even as miserable Steve desperately clings on to his contented, fundamentally optimistic older sister.

From the very beginning, you really got a thorough sense of each of the characters. Each of them, from the Valley children and their parents to the later introductions of Oriel and Bernand, were all marvelously introduced, followed by subsequent depth as you became better acquainted with them and their motivations.

The writing throughout the book was simply beautiful; Myers does a wonderful job of describing atmosphere and setting, particularly rain. I marked more passages in this book than I have in any other Persephone so far, overwhelmingly delighted by the language.

I also really enjoyed the plot; it was so well-paced, as well as satisfying in the way that the first half precluded so much of the later parts. You knew from those first few chapters that something was going to happen, yet at the same time, nothing could have prepared me for that ending, down to the final paragraph.

This was overall a phenomenal read, yet another treat from a publisher for whom I always hold such love, admiration, and respect.

[Mela]

It looked like an interesting novel. I found descriptions of life and the surrounding world captivating. But the dialogue and what the characters thought sounded artificial. I don't believe that people (at a specific time and in a social-economical group) could talk like that. I regret that I can force myself to ignore the style of dialogue, I would really like to learn the story/plot.

[Sarah]

In spite of the beautiful prose, something about this book just bothers me. It doesn't feel entirely honest.

I got the distinct impression that Myers was recounting real life conversations that didn't go at all the way she's recounted them for the reader. Her protagonist is aggressively cheerful and ostentatiously selfless. She's critical of everyone around her, yet everyone around her seems to adore her (or villainously resent her goodness and light). If L.M. Montgomery occasionally veered bit close to that line, Elizabeth Myers went careering right over it. That line is dot is Elizabeth.

[Hazel · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange book. If you are looking for realistic dialogue you won't find a scrap of it in this book. What makes this book especially interesting for me is Myers astonishing powers of description particularly of the supposedly mundane things in life. It was too flowery for me at times and at other times utterly implausible but I did need to finish it.

[Meri · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful mystical inspiring books I’ve ever read.

[Sara Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book decades ago when I was very young and it lingered in my mind like a distant dream and subsequently completely forgot the plot.
It came into my mind recently so ordered it online and reread it.
I am mystified by the generally luke warm reviews for this book here and elsewhere. This isn’t a flowery book about a girl who “ loves nature “ as many half hearted reviews have stated.
This book is pure enlightenment, it’s the secret of life and consciousness, of how to find eternity and sublime peace within the universe which is ourselves. This book is about Zen, the Dao, which was rarely discussed in the England in that era , which is what makes this book so surprisingly futuristic and unusual for its time .
For example : “ stand still to meet violence . Answer the shout with silence . The stunt is to be like a leaf yielding and merging with every wind …. Because untold strength lies in its willingness to be submerged “.
Many, many examples of how young Laura, the narrator of this book, is tremendously enlightened and subconsciously uses mindfulness to elevate her away from sorrow into bliss. She has, from a young age , the level of many spiritual teachers such as Thich Naht Hahn . In her case, it was her abusive mother who forced her to reach these spiritual heights. Evidence that suffering can often be the catalyst for inner growth .

Re-reading this book so many, many years after my original reading as an adolescent, I wish I had taken on board and learnt more from this book back then. How it would have helped me navigate the many paths which fate took me on!

I know nothing of the author apart from that she died young. What a wise woman she was and what a loss - I wish she’d had more opportunity to share this kind of wisdom which was so ahead of itself at the time.

[Jan Laney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the passages about nature, love and life seem flowery and verbose to the modern reader but her description of the early lives of those children, especially Steve spoke directly and really broke my heart. How important it is for a child to be loved and valued by their mother holds true today and always.

[DocNora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will not spend time reviewing this wonderful book with it's incandescent prose, which made me want to read everything she ever wrote, poor tragic her, who died aged 34 of consumption. Johnathan, another Goodreads reviewer has written an excellent review. I'm so glad Persephone books resurrected her!

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

rounding up. This took me a while to read but I needed a break while I was sick. It’s a beautiful book and does have a solid plot (maybe not for everyone but I’m a vibes based girly). It’s just overwritten. Laura has so much to say and it’s useful it’s just too much. You don’t get to enjoy the gems as much when it’s surrounded by similar language - it’s becomes overwhelming.

[Ffion]

“there's as much that is provoking and memorable in the mud as in the moon, no less of life's romance in the white stars of broken eggshells in the gutter than in the stars flying about the night sky like divine white bees.”

[Molly Furnival · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Luke Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some beautiful poetic flourishes in the dialogue and some delicious tragic-comic melodrama.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

cosmic shorthand written everywhere, an elemental faith religious but not consecrated

[K.lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overarching impression is - strange. One of those stories where almost nothing happens and it is very slow, which I don't hate. But combined with the outdated, wordy writing style and completely unrealistic dialogue, it was a tough read at times. At the same time there were many moments where I really enjoyed Laura's ruminations on the interconnectedness of the universe, the descriptions of insignificant moments that altered her state of mind, etc. I will be thinking about this book for a while...

[Irma · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were so many parts that were 5 star. But overall my enjoyment came in at 4.