The Fountain Overflows - Rebecca West - 1/2 ⭐ and a Did Not Finish

[[deleted user]]

Blurb: The lives of the talented Aubrey children have long been clouded by their father's genius for instability, but his new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin.

Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, who encounter furious poltergeists, turn up hidden masterpieces, and come to the aid of a murderess, will find that they have adventure to spare.

In The Fountain Overflows, a 1957 best seller, Rebecca West transmuted her own volatile childhood into enduring art. This is an unvarnished but affectionate picture of an extraordinary family, in which a remarkable stylist and powerful intelligence surveys the elusive boundaries of childhood and adulthood, freedom and dependency, the ordinary and the occult.

Review: I did not get on with this book at all - it's very slow and nothing much happens in the 19% I read. I gave it a good chance - I actually read further than the number of pages I wanted to (my rule on 'did not finish' books is to subtract my age from 100 and that's the number of pages I have to read) but this book is definitely not for me. I'm not really surprised however, as literary fiction is not my usual genre and I had very few books on the tbr to fit this tag.

[KateNZ]

Shame it was so disappointing. I’ve never heard of it but maybe I haven’t missed anything ...

[[deleted user]]

I'm sorry you didn't like it. I have not read it. But your review is really good! I imagine much better than the book.:)