Cover of The Fountain Overflows

The Fountain Overflows

Aubrey Trilogy seriesNext:This Real Night(1984) →

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.

Read more

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.

Audience
adult
Length
long · 408 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Fountain Overflows? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Fountain Overflows. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Angel Shares nyrb, fiction, classics
  2. The Slaves of Solitude Shares nyrb, fiction, nyrb classics
  3. Free onlineFree
    Lolly Willowes Shares nyrb, classics, nyrb classics
  4. The Vet's Daughter Shares nyrb, fiction, nyrb classics

“People who read The Fountain Overflows tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Invitation to the Waltz
  2. The Tortoise and the Hare
  3. Frost in May
  4. Manservant and Maidservant

“If you want more of the same (historical fiction about music), start with these.”

  1. Some Tame Gazelle
  2. Free onlineFree The Rainbow
  3. Free onlineFree Mrs Craddock
  4. Jane and Prudence

“If it was the nyrb that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Free onlineFree Hadrian the Seventh
  2. Free onlineFree Mary Olivier, a Life
  3. Eustace and Hilda
  4. A Game of Hide and Seek

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Liszt's Kiss
  2. Hidden
  3. Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood
  4. Roseblood