Rebecca West: This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund

These two novels are the sequels to West's The Fountain Overflows (1957), a saga about an eccentric and musical Aubrey family in London from the Edwardian period to the Depression. I really loved The Fountain Overflows, but I'm not so sure about its sequels. This may be because they were incomplete on West's death, and … Continue reading Rebecca West: This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund →

Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows

I took a while to get into this sturdy family saga: it was blocking the reading pile for weeks while I struggled to pay it proper attention. Then something clicked, and the peculiarities of The Fountain Overflows (1956) began to attract my attention. At first I thought that it was rather like Rose Macaulay’s Told … Continue reading Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows →

Reading Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage

This conversation began when Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books page noticed that I'd reviewed Pointed Roofs, the first volume of Pilgrimage. We began to chat about our respective experiences of reading the books, since he was only five volumes ahead of me, as I posted about Backwater and Honeycomb, and The Tunnel and Interim. … Continue reading Reading Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage →

Tell Me What You Read: Wendy Bryant

In Tell Me What You Read, a new feature on this blog, I interview well-kenned folk in public life about how their reading has shaped their lives, in the past and now. This week, Wendy Bryant, senior lecturer in occupational therapy at the University of Essex, artist and dog-walker Tell me which authors, or what reading, you … Continue reading Tell Me What You Read: Wendy Bryant →