Originally published in 1919, Stella Benson's Living Alone is a charming fantasy set in World War 1 London and dealing with the effects on several members of a Committee on War Savings of an unexpected encounter with a witch, who is never named but turns all of their lives upside down, for a litt...more

Perhaps it loses a little steam toward the end, but what a magical little book. Written and set during the tail end of the first world war, Living Alone presents us with a nameless witch, named inanimate objects (and the Dog David Blessing), a boarding-house founded on solitude and a pathetically...more

"This is not a real book. It does not deal with real people, nor should it be read by real people. But there are in the world so many real books already written for the benefit of real people, and there are still so many to be written, that I cannot believe that a little alien book such as this,...more

From the first paragraph I knew this was my kind of book. I wish I could write like Stella Benson, though without the casual anti-Semitism. There is some extraordinary writing in this book -- it skates on the edge of tweeness without falling unforgivably over, I think, but many might and probably...more

Sweet little novel about a witch and a social worker in WWI era London. There is some flying about on a sentient broomstick, some landscaping work in a faery garden, and a few poignant observations about human life and loneliness in the shadow of hard times. It safely treads ground others have wa...more

This is such a strange book. Yes, there is a plot and there are characters, but it's all about the mood, so it felt a bit like a collection of picturesque scenes. It's very visual - everything is described as looking like something else - and I think it would be an excellent graphic novel or illu...more

A woman bursts in upon a charitable committee, having just stolen a bun and needing to hide from the police. The charitable committee immediately start doing what charitable committees of the time were supposed to do: find reasons not to help her. But the woman doesn’t need or want help. She’s a...more

This book is so hard to rate, because the brilliant parts are so brilliant that they outshine the fact that the author seems to have set out to write a novel apparently without ever having read one, like it completely fails to do what you expect it to, it doesn't fit together, the tone is constan...more

A bit too twee for me, but she still writes brilliantly and has a great sense of humour