Product Description

Rose Aubrey is one of a family of four children. Their father, Piers, is the disgraced son of an Irish landowning family, a violent, noble and quite unscrupulous leader of popular causes. His Scottish wife, Clare, is an artist, a tower of strength, fanatically devoted to a musical future for her daughters. This is the story of their life in south London, a life threatened by Piers's streak of tragic folly which keeps them on the verge of financial ruin and social disgrace ...'A book bursting with love and vitality' DAILY EXPRESS

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280594 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 402 pages

Review
* 'It is improbably that even the most scrupulous reader could name a more poignantly and lovingly told tale, a more beautiful piece of writing' NYTimes * 'So vivid and lovable are her subjects, a crisis-ridden musical and literary family, that to finish the book is to suffer a bereavement.' Mail on Sunday.

About the Author
Rebecca West was born in London in 1892. She was educated in Edinburgh and began to appear in print as a journalist in London as early as 1911. She was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1959 and died in March 1983.

Customer Reviews

A deep and lyrical examination of genius
It would be easy to read a typical description of this book and come away with the impression that it is just another heartwarming ladies' novel. Well, anyone who knows Rebecca West's work could tell you that is simply not possible. In fact, this extraordinary and beautiful novel, the first of a trilogy sadly left unfinished at the author's death, is a profound meditation on the trials of being exceptional in a world that values only mediocrity. The writing is compelling, the characters more real than one's own friends, the view of childhood precise and unsentimental. If you trade a hundred bestsellers for this book, you are getting a bargain.

An astounding novel
It would be easy from the publisher's blurb to deduce that this is a family saga spanning three generations. But this is literature. True, it (and the other novels in the trilogy) are full of fascinating characters and events, but there is so much more to it. It reads as an autobiography, and indeed it is to some extent autobiographical. Unlike anything else I've read, it mingles details about life in a poverty-stricken middle-class household around 1900 with themes of love, religion, death, spiritualism, good and evil, education and art.

Utterly sublime...one of the best written books I've ever come across
Read it. Read it. You will not be disappointed. The first Rebecca West novel I've read and it will definitely not be my last. Breathtakingly written.