Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead Commentary
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Considered to be one of English author Barbara Comyns’ seminal works, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is a tight under 200-page, terrifying, absurdly funny, gorgeous novel about a small village affected by a flood and then a mysterious, deadly illness. Weaving through a delightfully flawed web of characters, the enchanting production neutrally floats above the horrors as an omnipotent, third person observer, quickly flowing from person to person. Its distance adds dark humor to moments that could otherwise feel too heavy. The result is a stage full of people captured one-by-one by a roaming camera, not often pausing for us to catch up. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is a clever, character-driven story explosive with a frightening plot, vibrating with the electricity living under each sentence— not a word wasted. About disaster and illness, Comyns’ novel is full of people trying to live “normally” amidst death and destruction— a theme that can resonate with today’s post-COVID readers who give this 1950s novel a chance. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead whispers tragedies to us— suicides, mass violence, drownings, gruesome illness casualties— but tempts us with the tantalizing promise that “it won’t affect us— our main characters,” only to chuckle and thrust us with them into the action. Devilishly funny, scary but with a happy ending, it’s a story about shitty parents, mass hysteria, profiting off of tragedy, buried treasure, and, as the introduction reads, “about what it’s like to grow up next to a river.”
Set in 1911, our central characters are the Willoweeds— a well-off family led by a raging elderly Matriarch, her lazy son, and his three young children, as well as the house staff. From its very first sentence, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead plops us immediately in the action, “The ducks swam through the drawing-room window.” When the river floods, their lives change forever— a bad omen of what’s to come. After the waters retreat, the town cleans up and returns to normal only to be knocked off balance again by a maddening, gastrointestinal disease running rampant through the village. Some believe the flood waters were toxic, others that the local baker accidentally poisoned his rye bread with ergot. At first, our main family remains aloof and untouched, but their immunity eventually runs out.
The Matriarch, the grandmother Willoweed, is a cruel, yet funny menace. Her gardener, Old Ives, believes she will “die from overeating.” Constantly eating, she never leaves her home and rules the house with an unpredictably moody, iron fist. They all live in fear of her, yet she is inescapable, and always hungry for gossip, just like her son. She can only travel through town by boat on the river because she “had an objection to walking or passing over ground that did not belong to her.” She has witchy tendencies and insists on her way even when her way leads to insanity. She watches the epidemic like one watches reality TV and, somehow, manages to survive.
Ebin Willoweed, the father, used to be a gossip writer and is very concerned with what people say, expect, and think about him, but not enough to feel shame for profiting off people’s pain. As the illness burns through town, Ebin is always there, on the perimeter, writing everything down. His eldest daughter Emma is disgusted by his callousness to suffering. “Father makes me hate men.” He publishes his first-hand accounts in a newspaper and comes into money that he had previously relied on his mother for, bolstering his confidence. But he is conflicted. “He felt guilty when he thought of the dreadful suffering and horror going on around him, which was directly the cause of his happiness and sudden prosperity.” Yet, not guilty enough to change his ways and that is the crux of his character— he knows he sucks and does feel some remorse for it but ultimately is too lazy to do otherwise.
Along with the illness, other things are dredged up from the ground— buried treasure. The two younger children “loved to dig in the exposed mud for treasure…” Old Ives also recently discovered a buried treasure: a small box with money inside, which he decided to give to the children. Ebin and his children walk to a nearby “miser’s cottage”, where Ebin lies and tells them that “the gold that was hidden there had never been found,” which makes the children want to try. Digging up treasure speaks to the excitement of uncovering something secret. The village is as full of secrets as it is full of characters. Affairs, children born out of wedlock, and the hatred possible in families. The illness reveals the lies and secrecy.
The disease is introduced to us slowly, affecting one person at a time. It began as a deadly nosebleed. But “within a few weeks, funerals were to become a common occurrence in that village…” Comyns’ ominous writing makes the slide into horror delightfully dreadful. The Miller goes mad and drowns himself. The Butcher slices his own throat in public. Then, for more villagers, the stomach pains and the diarrhea hit. (There are a few flatulence jokes that made me laugh.) But then comes the “sinister appearance of the dark little rye loaves,” and the culprit of our epidemic becomes not the river, but the baker’s bread, poisoned accidentally. When the village finds out, a mob forms and burns down the house of the baker’s assistant, with him inside. Out of guilt, though the mistake was an accident, the baker kills himself. “Please God, forgive me; but let me suffer for ever and ever.” After the true cause is discovered, and after all this tragedy, the illness fades and the survivors return to normal, many of our characters finding happiness, despite the horrors they saw. This is a rare case where horror can have a happy ending that works.
For readers looking to spice up their TBR with an older novel that’s got bite, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is a quick one, worthy of multiple re-reads.