Rebecca West

The Birds Fall Down (1986)

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...

A Train of Powder (2000)

This Real Night (1986)

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.....

Harriet Hume (1980)

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...

The Thinking Reed (1985)

Cousin Rosamund (1988)