Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2002), Paperback, 432 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML:A talented, eccentric London family tries to find their place in the world in this semiautobiographical novel by a New York Times�??bestselling author. Papa Aubrey's wife and twin daughters, Mary and Rose, are piano prodigies, his young son Richard Quin is a lively boy, and his eldest daughter Cordelia is a beautiful and driven young woman with musical aspirations. But the talented and eccentric Aubrey family rarely enjoys a moment of harmony, as its members struggle to overcome the effects of their patriarch's spendthrift ways. Now they must move so that their father, a noted journalist, can find stable employment. Throughout, it is the Aubreys' hope that art will save them from the cacophony of a life sliding toward poverty. In this eloquent and winning portrait, West's compelling characters must uncover their true talent for kindness in order to thrive in the world that exists outside of their life as a fami… (more)
Media reviews
[A]lthough it is clever and moderately entertaining in a leisurely fashion, it lacks entirely the diamond brilliance, the fierce intelligence and the incisive vigor of an obviously superior mind that we have learned to expect in any book by Rebecca West. . . It is a pleasant story enlivened by
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occasional splashes of verbal wit in general and particularly on life among the artistically gifted. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member nmhale
After a sleepy start, this book took hold of me and became one of my favorite Virago reads so far. The narrator, Rose, speaks in first person to tell us the story of her family history, and I was enchanted with her precocious voice from the start. However, West also writes with a style that is
Then, once I knew all the characters and felt like a part of their family, I was drawn into their world and really did have a hard time putting the book down. The plot, like the novel, required some reading before it took hold in the mind. Basically, Rose and her family are poor artists. Her mother gave up a career as a pianist to be with her husband and raise a family, and all of her children have inherited her musical genius, except one. Her husband, who is artistic in his writing and speaking, has another problem which keeps bringing the family down - he likes to waste their money. Not just on gambling (although he does that, too) but on crazy speculations and idealistic political agendas and constantly losing his job. These various threads create a lot of interweaving plot threads, and it is all viewed through the eyes of Rose, who is a young girl in elementary school. She loves her mother and her father, and she sees his flaws but she sees his sparkling character, and she loves her parents for being the unique beings that they are. Because of her artistic temperament, Rose can accept her poverty because she has her art, and her sister Mary and her brother Richard Quin, feel the same way. Her sister Cordelia, however, the only child to not inherit her mother's gift, just wants a normal life, and resents her family's oddity.
Their relationships are complex, and they form equally complicated relationships with other people around them. Just watching these interactions are interesting enough, but when you add the family's financial turmoil, the childhood fancies and imaginations, the murder subplot, and Cordelia's musical catastrophes, you end up with an engrossing family epic.
Like other novels that are well crafted, and are focused on telling a comprehensive story with developed characters and themes and metaphors, this is a story you will want to sink into with time and effort. It's beautiful, and can be heart lifting and tragic in turns, and will make you want to read more about the family. West was intending to make this a long series, and while she never completed that dream, this book can stand well on its own, and is well worth your time.
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extremely detailed and evocative, which initially distanced me from the book a bit. When you're just getting used to the characters, and come upon long passages describing the country or their new house, it slows down the reading momentum. Nonetheless, the writing was lovely, and Rose had a way of mixing her descriptions with her child's imaginations and memories which was charming and kept my interest. I just didn't have a hard time putting this book down, at first. Then, once I knew all the characters and felt like a part of their family, I was drawn into their world and really did have a hard time putting the book down. The plot, like the novel, required some reading before it took hold in the mind. Basically, Rose and her family are poor artists. Her mother gave up a career as a pianist to be with her husband and raise a family, and all of her children have inherited her musical genius, except one. Her husband, who is artistic in his writing and speaking, has another problem which keeps bringing the family down - he likes to waste their money. Not just on gambling (although he does that, too) but on crazy speculations and idealistic political agendas and constantly losing his job. These various threads create a lot of interweaving plot threads, and it is all viewed through the eyes of Rose, who is a young girl in elementary school. She loves her mother and her father, and she sees his flaws but she sees his sparkling character, and she loves her parents for being the unique beings that they are. Because of her artistic temperament, Rose can accept her poverty because she has her art, and her sister Mary and her brother Richard Quin, feel the same way. Her sister Cordelia, however, the only child to not inherit her mother's gift, just wants a normal life, and resents her family's oddity.
Their relationships are complex, and they form equally complicated relationships with other people around them. Just watching these interactions are interesting enough, but when you add the family's financial turmoil, the childhood fancies and imaginations, the murder subplot, and Cordelia's musical catastrophes, you end up with an engrossing family epic.
Like other novels that are well crafted, and are focused on telling a comprehensive story with developed characters and themes and metaphors, this is a story you will want to sink into with time and effort. It's beautiful, and can be heart lifting and tragic in turns, and will make you want to read more about the family. West was intending to make this a long series, and while she never completed that dream, this book can stand well on its own, and is well worth your time.
Show Less
LibraryThing member NancyKay_Shapiro
An all time favorite book. I've read it over and over. It's a whole world.
LibraryThing member BeyondEdenRock
‘The Fountain Overflows’ was Rebecca West’s first book in twenty years; and it was to have been the first volume of a trilogy that would tell the story of her century. She didn’t live quite long enough to complete that story, but after reading this book I am eager to read the next book and
This is a story that draws on the authors own life, without being entirely autobiographical; and it tells of growing up in a creative, musical family, from the perspective of one of the children of that family; a girl named Rose.
The father of the family, Piers Aubrey, was charming but he was thoughtless. He was the editor of a minor newspaper, he was a man who was ready to stand by and act on his convictions, but he was also a man who gambled away any money he earned on the Stock Exchange. He loved his wife, he loved his children, but he seemed unwilling – or unable – to accept the responsibilities that laid upon him.
wife and his children might have resented the choices he made, they might have been disappointed in him; but they weren’t. They loved him, they appreciated his strengths, and they accepted his weaknesses as inevitable in someone who had to venture outside the musical family circle to do battle for them in a world that didn’t appreciate the things that they loved. And so they did their level best to adapt themselves to his absences, to the loss of their good furniture, to frequent changes of address, and to love the copies of family portraits that hung in the children’s bedrooms.
And, of course, it is the mother of the family who holds things together; so clearly adoring her children, her family unit, and her role as mother. She had been a concert pianist, but everything that she had put into achieving that goal was put into family life. She loved finding the right instrument for each child – the violin for Cordelia, her eldest daughter, the piano for each of her twin girls, Rose and Mary; and the flute would – some time into the story – prove to be the instrument for her young son, Richard Quinn.
The author understood – and she made me understand and appreciate – the complex ties that bound that family together.
The story opens with the family on the cusp of moving to a new home in South London, where they will be settled for quite some time. It took me a little while to get my bearings, but I was enchanted with Rose’s voice; with the mixture of the descriptive, the fanciful, and the matter-of-fact; with the intelligence and the insight; and intensity, the love and the gorgeous, child-like attentiveness to detail of it all.
I was just a little sorry that Mary seemed often to disappear; or to be a mere adjunct to Rose, who was sometimes a little too conveniently always at the centre of things.
A picture emerged, and then I was truly captivated, and drawn right into family life.
The story is peppered with incident – most notably the ridding of a cousin’s home from a poltergeist, and the case of a neighbour who has been unjustly accused of murder – but those are not the things that make this story sing.
What does make the story sing?
Well, there’s wonderful insight into the condition of childhood, and the way that, despite its genteel poverty, the family’s lives are rich and full. There’s the drawing close together of a family that is a little isolated, because it is different, because there seems to be no one close to them who understands the very special magic of the creative, artistic life.
The children’s love for each other, that endures even when Cordelia’s wish for a more conventional life maddens them, is caught perfectly. They all adore their little brother, Richard Quinn, who is bright, idiosyncratic, and utterly irresistible. They happily draw their cousin Rosamunde, who is not musical but who they recognise has other wonderful gifts, into their circle. They accept Nancy, daughter of the neighbour accused of murder, too, they are terribly sorry that she seems ungifted, but that is no obstacle to them taking to her hearts. Her difference fascinates them, and they determine that they will help her, as they will help their mother and all of those they love, when their musical gifts rescue them from poverty. They have such wonderful, unwavering faith that they will succeed.
The darkness of the material world, where their father must do battle, is set against the warmth and love of the home that their mother creates. That is why he can always be forgiven. But as the children grow things change. Cordelia could play, but she could not truly understand her music, and so, of course, she could never be a professional musician. Her mother understood that but Cordelia couldn’t, and her pretensions were fostered by an a teacher who had just the same weaknesses. The playing out of this strand is particularly well judged; the contrast between the mother who saw and the teacher who didn’t, and judged the mother harshly, is striking; and I was devastated for Cordelia when she finally came to understand.
That final drama led this novel to its own conclusion.
Taken as a whole it feel idiosyncratic, but that feels right because it is catching all of the twists and turns of lives lived. There were times when it made my heart sing, and there were times when I thought it might break. The writing is so lovely, and it speaks so profoundly of family and musicality, that I was lost when I reached the final page and my life and those lives moved apart.
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to read the final, unfinished work. This is a story that draws on the authors own life, without being entirely autobiographical; and it tells of growing up in a creative, musical family, from the perspective of one of the children of that family; a girl named Rose.
The father of the family, Piers Aubrey, was charming but he was thoughtless. He was the editor of a minor newspaper, he was a man who was ready to stand by and act on his convictions, but he was also a man who gambled away any money he earned on the Stock Exchange. He loved his wife, he loved his children, but he seemed unwilling – or unable – to accept the responsibilities that laid upon him.
wife and his children might have resented the choices he made, they might have been disappointed in him; but they weren’t. They loved him, they appreciated his strengths, and they accepted his weaknesses as inevitable in someone who had to venture outside the musical family circle to do battle for them in a world that didn’t appreciate the things that they loved. And so they did their level best to adapt themselves to his absences, to the loss of their good furniture, to frequent changes of address, and to love the copies of family portraits that hung in the children’s bedrooms.
And, of course, it is the mother of the family who holds things together; so clearly adoring her children, her family unit, and her role as mother. She had been a concert pianist, but everything that she had put into achieving that goal was put into family life. She loved finding the right instrument for each child – the violin for Cordelia, her eldest daughter, the piano for each of her twin girls, Rose and Mary; and the flute would – some time into the story – prove to be the instrument for her young son, Richard Quinn.
The author understood – and she made me understand and appreciate – the complex ties that bound that family together.
The story opens with the family on the cusp of moving to a new home in South London, where they will be settled for quite some time. It took me a little while to get my bearings, but I was enchanted with Rose’s voice; with the mixture of the descriptive, the fanciful, and the matter-of-fact; with the intelligence and the insight; and intensity, the love and the gorgeous, child-like attentiveness to detail of it all.
I was just a little sorry that Mary seemed often to disappear; or to be a mere adjunct to Rose, who was sometimes a little too conveniently always at the centre of things.
A picture emerged, and then I was truly captivated, and drawn right into family life.
The story is peppered with incident – most notably the ridding of a cousin’s home from a poltergeist, and the case of a neighbour who has been unjustly accused of murder – but those are not the things that make this story sing.
What does make the story sing?
Well, there’s wonderful insight into the condition of childhood, and the way that, despite its genteel poverty, the family’s lives are rich and full. There’s the drawing close together of a family that is a little isolated, because it is different, because there seems to be no one close to them who understands the very special magic of the creative, artistic life.
The children’s love for each other, that endures even when Cordelia’s wish for a more conventional life maddens them, is caught perfectly. They all adore their little brother, Richard Quinn, who is bright, idiosyncratic, and utterly irresistible. They happily draw their cousin Rosamunde, who is not musical but who they recognise has other wonderful gifts, into their circle. They accept Nancy, daughter of the neighbour accused of murder, too, they are terribly sorry that she seems ungifted, but that is no obstacle to them taking to her hearts. Her difference fascinates them, and they determine that they will help her, as they will help their mother and all of those they love, when their musical gifts rescue them from poverty. They have such wonderful, unwavering faith that they will succeed.
The darkness of the material world, where their father must do battle, is set against the warmth and love of the home that their mother creates. That is why he can always be forgiven. But as the children grow things change. Cordelia could play, but she could not truly understand her music, and so, of course, she could never be a professional musician. Her mother understood that but Cordelia couldn’t, and her pretensions were fostered by an a teacher who had just the same weaknesses. The playing out of this strand is particularly well judged; the contrast between the mother who saw and the teacher who didn’t, and judged the mother harshly, is striking; and I was devastated for Cordelia when she finally came to understand.
That final drama led this novel to its own conclusion.
Taken as a whole it feel idiosyncratic, but that feels right because it is catching all of the twists and turns of lives lived. There were times when it made my heart sing, and there were times when I thought it might break. The writing is so lovely, and it speaks so profoundly of family and musicality, that I was lost when I reached the final page and my life and those lives moved apart.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Oregonreader
I had some difficulty getting into this book. Although not strictly autobiographical, West has based the characters on her family. The story revolves around the fortunes of the Aubrey family. The narrator is Rose, one of the four children of Piers, a small time newspaper editor and pamphleteer, and
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Clare, formerly a concert pianist who gave up her career upon marriage. Rose struck me at first as another example of the peculiarly British fictional character, the very precocious child who patronizes and condescends to the adults around her. But as I continued, I began to realize that West had created Rose with an adult eye so that she could describe their failings and weaknesses of the others while at the same time loving them with a child's unquestioning love. She describes her father with the words "sneering" and "swaggering", while expressing her adoration. The mother is so sensitive that hearing music performed by one who is not gifted makes her physically ill and yet she is the strength in the family, holding them together through poverty and disappointment. I gradually became fond of them all and fascinated by their lives. My biggest disappointment was the ending, which ends abruptly, almost as if the narrator suddenly put her pen down and had no chance to continue. Show Less
LibraryThing member lauralkeet
This semi-autobiographical novel is a family story told from the children's point of view. Rose Aubrey, her older sisters Mary & Cordelia, and her younger brother Richard Quin are in a loving but dysfunctional family, with a father (Piers) who cannot hold a job and tends to gamble money away, and a
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mother (Clare) who gives 100% to her children while coping with his failings. Music plays a significant role in the novel. Cordelia, the eldest, takes up the violin and, encouraged by her teacher, performs locally. But Clare knows she does not have real talent and that one day her hopes will be dashed. Clare, an accomplished pianist, sees more potential in Rose and Mary. The sisters also form a close bond with their cousin Rosamund, who along with her mother prefer time with the Aubreys to time spent with Rosamund's father. And despite their limited resources, the family comes to the aid of another in their town when their lives are torn apart by a brutal crime. Over the years the family has its ups and downs as a result of Piers' failed schemes, but are held together by Clare who, in the end, proves to have the upper hand on the entire situation. Show Less
LibraryThing member alwaysmlo
One of my all time favorite biographies. Rebecca West was a great idealist. This volume about her childhood shows her way of looking at the world, along the same lines of the opening pages of "To the Lighthouse". If you liked To the Lighthouse, you will like this book.
LibraryThing member eliza.graham.180
I only wish Rebecca West had written the rest in the planned series. It would have been fascinating to see the children develop and take shape as the century unfolded.
LibraryThing member juniperSun
Boring, unable to finish.
Noted during my 1980's attempt to read every book in my small town library.
Noted during my 1980's attempt to read every book in my small town library.
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1956
Physical description
432 p.; 8.14 inches
ISBN
1590170342 / 9781590170342