‘God in the Billiard Room’ by Barbara Comyns

This is an excerpt from Barbara Comyns’ Sisters by a River, a novel whose chapters were serialised in Lilliput magazine under the title “the novel nobody will publish”. It’s gloriously plotless, highly descriptive, and with the surrealism every child experiences. In this one God appears as a sort of floating brown paper bag. It is done in a deadpan, factual way and such a wonderful little chapter and it’s taught me to be more fearless and more surreal in my fiction.

First published in Lilliput Magazine, and then included in Sisters by a River, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1947, republished by Virago Press in 2013