Product Description

Though the Aubreys’ lives have long been clouded by their father’s genius for instability, surely his new editorial appointment in London will turn things around. Seen through the merciless, loving eyes of young Rose, one of four siblings, Rebecca West’s 1957 novel is a vital, witty, and devastating family portrait -- a brilliant re-imagining of her own volatile childhood. Remarkable for its evocation of the Edwardian age, The Fountain Overflows is every bit as penetrating as West’s great work of nonfiction Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and has a dash of the supernatural thrown in for good measure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #307369 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-31
• Released on: 2002-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Review
Rose, the youngest daughter and perceptive narrator of The Fountain Overflows, is a mildly fictional, youthful Rebecca West. In early 1900s London, Papa, misunderstood writer and never-successful politician, goes away - again - to earn money. The children stay very busy being young, trying hard to respect, reconcile, and live with Mamma's tradition of genteel Englishness and Papa's foolishness while their worrisome - and embarrassing - poverty deepens. Mamma is discouraged but brave, "a nerve-jerked woman" able to "straighten her shoulders and cock her hat and assume the character of a smart and undefeated woman." A concert pianist turned wife and mother, she makes music a constant for her children. Rose and Mary play the piano; Cordelia performs on the violin "with the air of somebody who is being photographed," determined to make it her road to fame and fortune. The Fountain Overflows is a reader's feast of subtle, penetrating, and hilarious observations on childhood, social posturing, and anglo-saxon heritage. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen

About the Author
REBECCA WEST (1892–1983) was born Cicily Isabel Fairfield, the youngest of three daughters of Charles Fairfield, a journalist in London, and Isabel Mackenzie, a talented pianist who supported her family by giving music lessons. Fairfield was a brilliant storyteller who entertained his daughters with tales of wild adventures in America and Australia, but he was moody and unreliable, and in 1901 he left his wife and children to go to Sierra Leone, where he hoped to start a pharmaceutical plant. The plan failed, and he returned to London, though not to his family, dying when Cicily was fourteen. Inspired by such stars of the stage as Sarah Bernhardt and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Cicily hoped to become an actress, and in 1910 she enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Art. Soon, however, she abandoned her theatrical ambitions and joined the staff of the feminist journal The Freewoman, for which she began to write regularly under the name of Rebecca West (adopted after playing that character in a performance of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm). Among Rebecca West’s protean accomplishments are critical studies of two writers she deeply admired, Henry James and D.H. Lawrence; Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), a vast work about pre–World War II Yugoslavia that combines history, political analysis, and vivid descriptions of travel; The Meaning of Treason (1947); and several novels, beginning with The Return of the Soldier (1918) and including The Fountain Overflows (1956), which is closely modeled on the events of her own childhood.

Customer Reviews

An extraordinary study of the extraordinary
Rebecca West's THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS, published in 1956, is one of the last great British modernist novels. Usually overlooked on modernism course syllabi in favor of West's shorter (but not as profound) THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER, THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS is an exceptionally funny and evocative portrait of a shabby-genteel family of thinkers and artists at the turn of the century in a London suburb. The narrator, Rose Aubrey, and her twin sister Mary are young pianists; like their younger brother, the adored and otherwordly Richard Quin, a flautist, they are encouraged by their nervous and kindly mother, herself an accomplished musician in her youth. (The musical inadequacies of the eldest daughter, Cordelia, form the longest running joke in the novel--and eventually its greatest emotional payoff.) They live practically hand-to-mouth given their unending state of destitution wrought upon them by their handsome and mercurial father, who loves his family but cannot provide a stable life for them. Yet despite their poverty the family's life is never shown to be anything less than magical, given the gifts and talents the parents have for seeing the world always as a wondrous place. This sense of the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary, the book's great theme, is mirrored both in West's gorgeously descriptive prose and in the family's regular encounters with the supernatural: ghosts, telepathy, and poltergeists play important parts in the novel. The novel is episodic, in the way of its comic antecedents, such as Fielding, early Dickens, and Elizabeth Gaskell's CRANFORD. Still, West's sense of a strong narrative to the family's fortunes keeps you in narrative suspense nonetheless: as you read it you cannot wait to see what happens to the family next.

Quite Simply One of the Best Books in English Literature
I had heard of author Rebecca West, mainly as the young woman who had a long term affair with a much older H.G. Wells and produced a child out of wedlock, back when things like this were considered shocking. I stumbled across a copy of this book and decided it might make an interesting read.
I never imagined that I had found a true classic, a book that uses the English language to a degree unsurpassed by any other author I have ever read. The story of is simple, that of a down on their luck family, living in London during the early 1900's. Their trials and tribulations are faithfully described, as are the multitude of characters they befriend. Actually to describe the plot, one might assume that not much really happens and to be honest, the plot is not the main attribute of this novel. But the language! I have often thought that I would some day like to write a novel but after reading this book, I would not even attempt it! This is how language should be used...clear and concise but also able to convey atmosphere and emotions. Page after page of luscious words, all combining together to create an unforgettable reading experience. If, like me, you wanted to read more, please note that the sequel, This Real Night is almost as good. A third book, Cousin Rosamund is much weaker since it was not completed at the time of the author's death.
Please do yourself a favor and read this book. I think this ranks with Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights as books which define the best that the English language can offer.

In a Class by Itself
I have been reading, reading, reading for fifty plus years. Oddly I don't dream about books, but this one was an exception. The character Cordelia came to haunt my sleep, lively and unforgettable. A vidid, surprising, unpredictable, eccentric, and thoroughly original work. Seek it out.