Approaches to writing fiction vary as much as tastes in reading it: that's a way of recognizing that The Birds Fall Down disagrees with some readers, in large ways or small. One reason I admired it, when I read it in the mid-90s, was precisely its unusual features. Broadly speaking, it concerns t...
Like most all of Rebecca West's reportage, A Train of Powder approaches great literature. Written between 1946 and 1954, these accounts of four controversial trials explore the nature of crime and punishment, innocence and guilt, retribution and forgiveness. The centerpiece of the book is "Greenh...
Having enjoyed The Return of the Soldier, I picked this up in a charity shop, without realising it was the second of a trilogy until after I started reading it. Fortunately, it still works as a standalone book.This is a coming of age novel, set in in the run up to WW1: "I wanted to make friends.....
I read Harriet Hume to close out the set of novels whose characters personify Virginia Woolf's themes from "A Room of One's Own." All three novels - written by Woolf, Rebecca West, and Vita Sackville-West - contrast the feminine appreciation for beauty with the masculine urge to dominate.This nov...
Isabelle, a wealthy American widow, arrives in France to restart her life and discovers she has her choice of eligible suitors. Torn between a placid liaison with a southerner and a tortuous affair with a Frenchman, Isabelle's plans suddenly take an unexpected turn that will ultimately lead her t...
Rich in period detail, lyrical in its evocation of the Thames, a novel that reveals both the problems of marriage and the ecstasies of sexual love
He rose late; through the day a shadow grew blacker round his jaw for lack of shaving, and he shuffled about the house in carpet slippers, or paced the garden, talking to himself or droning “The Wearing of the Green”; in the late afternoon he went to his study and worked there through the evening...
He came at six o’clock.’ ‘Oh I am glad!’ exclaimed Sunflower. Now she would be able to tell him about Alice Hester at once. ‘Where is he?’ ‘He is at dinner, Madam, and—’ But Sunflower threw down her gloves and bag on the hall-table, and ran right into the dining-room, which was silted up with lat...
Ruth Waterhouse was born in Syracuse, and when she got into her teens she stayed out late nights. In relating her life story, in her high, faint voice that is nearly a breath, that threatens to die away altogether if she is not believed, she attributes this to the interesting and undeniable fact ...
“It is a strange thing,” he began, and broke off to wonder, “Is this mirror my own or have I sold it? I know there have been great transactions of late to which I am a party, but at the moment I cannot remember whether they are concluded. At any rate my reflection is my own. Ha! That is an asset ...