The Fountain Overflows

I had heard of author Rebecca West, mainly as the young woman who had a long term affair with a much older H.G. Wells and produced a child out of wedlock, back when things like this were considered shocking. I stumbled across a copy of this book and decided it might make an interesting read.I never imagined that I had found a true classic, a book that uses the English language to a degree unsurpassed by any other author I have ever read. The story of is simple, that of a down on their luck family, living in London during the early 1900's. Their trials and tribulations are faithfully described, as are the multitude of characters they befriend. Actually to describe the plot, one might assume that not much really happens and to be honest, the plot is not the main attribute of this novel. But the language! I have often thought that I would some day like to write a novel but after reading this book, I would not even attempt it! This is how language should be used...clear and concise but also able to convey atmosphere and emotions. Page after page of luscious words, all combining together to create an unforgettable reading experience. If, like me, you wanted to read more, please note that the sequel, This Real Night is almost as good. A third book, Cousin Rosamund is much weaker since it was not completed at the time of the author's death. Please do yourself a favor and read this book. I think this ranks with Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights as books which define the best that the English language can offer.

About two pages into this I realized I'd come across a sublimely intelligent and aware narrative voice -- that of a 12-yr-old girl in turn-of-the-century London -- and from that point on I read the rest of the novel in a page-turning fever of delight and pleasure. A fictionalized account of Rebecca West's real family, the story follows the lives of the narrator, Rose Aubrey and her twin sister Mary (both of whom are prodigies on the piano), their older sister Cordelia, who apparently stinks at the piano, but doesn't realize it (much to the chagrine of the rest of the family), their thoroughly unflappable and adored younger brother, Richard, a flautist, and their ragged, heroic mother who tries to keep the family above water while the father, a brilliant essayist and pamphleteer who is completely lacking in all matters of practicality, loses one job after another. It's a brilliant cast brought unforgettably to life by West's flawless prose and the intelligence, generosity, imagination and wit poured into it. When you close the book, you feel as if you had just remembered moments from a real family you'd known while growing up, but who you lost touch with because your family moved away. Truly wonderful. Please, if you love beautiful things, read this.

Rebecca West's THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS, published in 1956, is one of the last great British modernist novels. Usually overlooked on modernism course syllabi in favor of West's shorter (but not as profound) THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER, THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS is an exceptionally funny and evocative portrait of a shabby-genteel family of thinkers and artists at the turn of the century in a London suburb. The narrator, Rose Aubrey, and her twin sister Mary are young pianists; like their younger brother, the adored and otherwordly Richard Quin, a flautist, they are encouraged by their nervous and kindly mother, herself an accomplished musician in her youth. (The musical inadequacies of the eldest daughter, Cordelia, form the longest running joke in the novel--and eventually its greatest emotional payoff.) They live practically hand-to-mouth given their unending state of destitution wrought upon them by their handsome and mercurial father, who loves his family but cannot provide a stable life for them. Yet despite their poverty the family's life is never shown to be anything less than magical, given the gifts and talents the parents have for seeing the world always as a wondrous place. This sense of the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary, the book's great theme, is mirrored both in West's gorgeously descriptive prose and in the family's regular encounters with the supernatural: ghosts, telepathy, and poltergeists play important parts in the novel. The novel is episodic, in the way of its comic antecedents, such as Fielding, early Dickens, and Elizabeth Gaskell's CRANFORD. Still, West's sense of a strong narrative to the family's fortunes keeps you in narrative suspense nonetheless: as you read it you cannot wait to see what happens to the family next.

I have been reading, reading, reading for fifty plus years. Oddly I don't dream about books, but this one was an exception. The character Cordelia came to haunt my sleep, lively and unforgettable. A vidid, surprising, unpredictable, eccentric, and thoroughly original work. Seek it out.

This is my very favorite book in the world, and Rebecca West never did quite so well again. An astonishing cast of characters, seen with a child's sensitivity and belief in the magical in everyday life. The only thing better than the family members are the minor characters: Mr. Morpurgo, Nancy and her aunt, Cordelia's violin teacher.This book acknowledges the complexities of all human beings.A father who makes his children elaborate individual dollhouses and tells them stories about them, but gambles away all their money and abandons them, a mother who appears half-cracked to casual acquaintances but is a gifted pianist and the one who holds her family together and provides a haven for the huge cast of fascinating strangers who cross her path, battered by life. An enormously likable child narrator, but the mother is the true heroine of this story, and how often does that happen?