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. 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.”

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