This Real Night

Author: West, Rebecca

Fiction & related items

Published on 31 December 1987 by Little, Brown Book Group (Virago Press Ltd) as part of 'the Virago Modern Classics' series.

Acknowledged as Rebecca West's fictional masterpiece, The Fountain Overflows introduces the crisis-ridden Aubrey family. This Real Night continues their remarkable story.

It is the early 1900s. With the disappearance of Piers, her feckless and gambling husband, and the sale of some valuable paintings, Clare Aubrey has a firmer grip on the purse strings. Rose and Mary are at music college, struggling for artistic perfection, while the self-assured Cordelia has fallen into the role of art dealer's assistant. Richard Quin, beloved younger brother, is contemplating Oxford. The children's coming of age, with its gradual acceptance of love and loss, becomes all the more poignant as the events of the First World War gather pace...