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Aubrey Trilogy #1-3
The Saga of the Century Trilogy: The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund
Three eloquent and powerful semi-autobiographical novels about the multi-talented Aubrey family striving to find their place in the world
In The Fountain Overflows, 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 can find stable employment. Despite the daunting odds, the Aubreys hope that art will save them from the cacophony of a life sliding toward poverty.
In The Real Night, a talented musician and her kin ponder what being young women on their own will entail. Abandoned by their feckless father, Rose and her family must move beyond their comfortable drawing room to discover a world of kind patrons, music teachers, and concert hall acclaim, but also domestic strife, anti-Semitism, and social pressure to marry. Set before World War I, Rebecca West’s intimate, eloquent family portrait brings to life a time when women recognized their own voices and the joys of living off one’s own talents.
In Cousin Rosamund, Mary and Rose Aubrey have found success as accomplished pianists in the years after the war. But despite their travels and material rewards, they remain apart from society. When their cherished cousin Rosamund surprises them by marrying a man they feel is beneath her, the sisters must reconsider what love means to them and how they can find a sense of spiritual wellbeing on their own, without the guidance of their family.
1169 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Rebecca West
131 books482 followersCicely Isabel Fairfield, known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic, and travel writer. She was brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she attended George Watson's Ladies College.
A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century. She reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman. Her major works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning of Treason, later The New Meaning of Treason, a study of World War II and Communist traitors; The Return of the Soldier, a modernist World War I novel; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund. Time called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to British letters.
A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century. She reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman. Her major works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning of Treason, later The New Meaning of Treason, a study of World War II and Communist traitors; The Return of the Soldier, a modernist World War I novel; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund. Time called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to British letters.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 6, 2018
I happened upon an e-book version of the trilogy, all three volumes conveniently in one file, and having started, I wanted to keep contact with these engaging, eccentric people and their stories.
The collection of characters and circumstances is almost a gentler version of Dickens', but quite different in style and emotional tone. As with any semi-autobiographical fiction, you can't help wondering which of the characters and circumstances are based in reality, and which are invented, and I couldn't help hoping that those who provided much of the humour were indeed fictional, so that there weren't real people being written about as silly or unspeakably vulgar, which would hurt their feelings if they knew.
For kindness and acceptance are very much at the centre of the world West created in these books. Most of the characters aim to be good (there is, of course, the exception of Queenie, who poisoned her husband, and who is redeemed most unexpectedly in volume three). In many ways it feels as though she was playing with ideas about different sorts of love, and what women look for when they marry.
West's work as a journalist and a political writer has flowed through into these books in number of ways, not least in her acute social observations.
The first book was the strongest of the three, and the last, unfinished, was not as convincing as its predecessors, but altogether it was highly enjoyable.
The collection of characters and circumstances is almost a gentler version of Dickens', but quite different in style and emotional tone. As with any semi-autobiographical fiction, you can't help wondering which of the characters and circumstances are based in reality, and which are invented, and I couldn't help hoping that those who provided much of the humour were indeed fictional, so that there weren't real people being written about as silly or unspeakably vulgar, which would hurt their feelings if they knew.
For kindness and acceptance are very much at the centre of the world West created in these books. Most of the characters aim to be good (there is, of course, the exception of Queenie, who poisoned her husband, and who is redeemed most unexpectedly in volume three). In many ways it feels as though she was playing with ideas about different sorts of love, and what women look for when they marry.
West's work as a journalist and a political writer has flowed through into these books in number of ways, not least in her acute social observations.
The first book was the strongest of the three, and the last, unfinished, was not as convincing as its predecessors, but altogether it was highly enjoyable.
April 4, 2015
Finished reading the first book, The Fountain Overflows; brilliant writing. The voice of the young Rose is lovely genius. When I wasn't reading, I missed her.
..........Months later. I've read all three. Now I've read almost everything by Rebecca West. I continue to be enthralled by Roses voice. And I'd probably be ashamed at my adoration of both Rebecca and Iris Murdoch, after all I profess to be a manly heterosexual man.., but I've had my Hemingway period and that was long ago. And I've had my Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, Ian Frasier period.
So I'm entitled. And I think the Brits have more good writers, per capita at least, than the rest of us English speakers, so there. And a person has to get beyond the "ballsy" aesthetic, in order to be a real grown-up, I know that from having lived around painters, in the fifties, and seen that the boys were just a bunch of immature drunks.
December 4, 2023
I loved this trilogy, although I felt the last book was not very satisfying. The Fountain Overflows contains wonderful characterizations and descriptions of place and let me escape into another world as this one seemed to be falling to pieces. [Edit: I just received the hardcover copy of the third part of the trilogy and NO WONDER I found it less satisfying: it was not finished before West’s death, so was constructed based on manuscript sketches found in her papers.]
December 3, 2017
Wonderful
Some critic said that nothing ever happens, everything happens! I could not put it down. It was so good I did not want it to finish.
Some critic said that nothing ever happens, everything happens! I could not put it down. It was so good I did not want it to finish.
on-pause
August 31, 2026Read The Fountain Overflows from July 27 - August 31, 2026
April 2, 2018
Finished. It wasn’t easy. Iperceviered because I admire Ms West so much having read some of her nonfiction. I enjoyed her flights of descriptions of the English country side, less so her lengthy descriptions of music. The twins persecution of Cordelia and their worship of the brother both became tiresome. The twins did not always seem very sympatheticcharacters. Their rags to riches and their marvelous benefactor and the ever present perfect servant cast a certain fairy tale aura about the tale. The last book, unfinished ny Ms West covered some interesting territory, homosexuality, marriage both good and bad, solitude as a choice. Who knows where she might have gone had she lived.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews