Lolly Willowes : Or the Loving Huntsman (New York Review Books Classics)
“[The book] I’ll be pressing into people’s hands forever is “Lolly Willowes,” the 1926 novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favor of freedom and the most unexpected of alliances. It completely blindsided me: Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness.” - Helen Macdonald in The New York Times Book Review's “By the Book."
In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break way from her controlling family—a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.
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Community Reviews
It started out not so promising for me, with the overwrought style that I detest, but once I got into the flow and recognized the sardonic wit lying below the surface, I settled in and enjoyed the ride.
Laura "Lolly" Willowes, not marriage material because of her unconventionality, then gets conscripted into a life of eternal aunt-dom. She longs for her independence and, finally, after 20 years of living under her brother's and sister-in-law's roof, sets off on her own. She finds a small village in the Chilterns where she can finally be alone. But not long after she has finally found her peace and happiness, then along comes her grown nephew Titus, determined to make sure she's never lonely. Oh, no!
Lolly turns to witchcraft and pacts with the devil to help her be rid of this unwelcome encumbrance. Seemingly forward thinking for its time.
Eu devorei esse livro tão rapidamente que meu único arrependimento foi ter lido ele tão rápido ou não ter lido ele antes na minha vida pra poder estar relendo ele mais uma vez agora.
Uma obra prima, subversiva, arrebatadora.
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