- Paperback: 402 pages
- Publisher: Virago Press Ltd; New edition edition (31 Dec 1984)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0860684938
- ISBN-13: 978-0860684930
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.4 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 218,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
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.
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
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book fell into my hands by accident - and I am so pleased that it did. I loved it!
The story centres on the Aubrey family and is told through the eyes of Rose, one of three daughters. The family is musical and cultured, but bohemian. They have middle class roots, but struggle financially.
I loved the description of the era, giving me an intriguing insight into how things were for a middle class, musical and slightly bohemian family in the late 1800s. As Rebecca West used her own childhood to inform the story, the accuracy of the detail cannot be doubted and is so refreshing when we are surrounded by so many novels that are set in the past but, despite meticulous research, can rarely completely enter the minds and lives of people in earlier times.
My favourite description is close to the beginning of the book. The family is in Edinburgh and will shortly leave for London. They leave Edinburgh station and travel towards Morningside, a route that I myself have travelled frequently over the past 25 years:
'The tramcar rocked up The Mound with the free camelish motion of trolley cars, swung round the curve at the top and, and shambled over George the Fourth Bridge, the bridge which fascinated us children because it crossed no river but canyons of slums... We got out at the head of Meadow Walk, and as we went down it we saw the dark blocks of the Infirmary among the reddening trees'.
And there is much, much more. For me, this book was deeply satisfying and very interesting. I am now looking forward to reading more of Rebecca West's work.
The story centres on the Aubrey family and is told through the eyes of Rose, one of three daughters. The family is musical and cultured, but bohemian. They have middle class roots, but struggle financially.
I loved the description of the era, giving me an intriguing insight into how things were for a middle class, musical and slightly bohemian family in the late 1800s. As Rebecca West used her own childhood to inform the story, the accuracy of the detail cannot be doubted and is so refreshing when we are surrounded by so many novels that are set in the past but, despite meticulous research, can rarely completely enter the minds and lives of people in earlier times.
My favourite description is close to the beginning of the book. The family is in Edinburgh and will shortly leave for London. They leave Edinburgh station and travel towards Morningside, a route that I myself have travelled frequently over the past 25 years:
'The tramcar rocked up The Mound with the free camelish motion of trolley cars, swung round the curve at the top and, and shambled over George the Fourth Bridge, the bridge which fascinated us children because it crossed no river but canyons of slums... We got out at the head of Meadow Walk, and as we went down it we saw the dark blocks of the Infirmary among the reddening trees'.
And there is much, much more. For me, this book was deeply satisfying and very interesting. I am now looking forward to reading more of Rebecca West's work.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Wonderful Story of Family and Music
Originally intended as the first in a trilogy or tetralogy of novels about Rose and Mary Aubrey and their cousin Rosamond, this is a wonderful story of a family living in South... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Kate Hopkins
Beautiful prose with a real understanding of a child's world
I was loaned this book and read it slowly over a period of three months. I was very busy at the time and in the early hours of the morning would reach for it. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Ms. R. L. A. Amelan
Beautiful writing
A wonderful book, were Edwardian children educated to a far greater standard than us or is it the authors intelligence that is projected on to the children. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Sean Higgins
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.
Published on 9 Jun 2009 by D. M. Hardcastle
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