Cousin Rosamund’ is the final, incomplete book of a series that was to tell the story of a century through the story of the lives of the Aubrey family and their circle.

The first book, The Fountain Overflows was published in 1956; the second book, This Real Night, was published in 1984, a year after the author’s death; and then this book was published, with notes suggesting what might have followed.

This book, reckoned to be two-thirds complete by Victoria Glendinning, who wrote the afterword, is less polished than the books came before, and it doesn’t stand up well as a book on its own, but I was drawn in by a wonderfully familiar narrative voice and I was intrigued by the way that the story evolved.

It has moved into a new milieu and a new age, and the covers of the Virago Modern Classics editions of these books reflect the way that this story of a century has developed and changed rather well.

Twin sisters Rose – who tells the story – and Mary have successful careers as concert pianists, but they are struggling to come to terms with the loss of their mother and of their much loved younger brother, Richard Quin.

They have the support of family friends.

Mr Morpugo, who had employed their father and had always been happier with their family than with his own, had helped them to let the family home and found them a lovely new home in St John’s Wood. They recognised that it was the right thing to do, but they vowed to make it as much like south London as they could. Bringing Kate, their much loved family retainer with them, helped a great deal.

Their much-loved cousin Rosamund had achieved her long-held ambition to become a nurse and is sharing a flat with her mother a few miles away. Rose and Mary were sorry not to have Rosamund with them, but they understood that she had to live close to her work, and they appreciated that she wanted to support her mother, who had not had the easiest life.

The Dog and Duck, on the banks of the river Thames, run by old family friends, continued to be a refuge. It showed them a world utterly different from the artistic and domestic worlds they knew, and they had always loved it.

They weren’t just coping with grief; they were coping with their careers not being what they hoped they would be. They loved the playing, they loved the luxuries that success brought them, but they hated the vulgar, social world that they had to move through and they were bitterly disappointed that so few of the people that they met had a real love and understanding of music

The love of their oldest friends sustained Rose and Mary, but they seemed unable to move forward from that, and to form new, adult relationships.

This book follows their painful journey towards emotional and artistic maturity.

They lose their cousin Rosamund, who makes an inexplicable marriage to a man they consider quite beyond the pale, and abandons her career and her mother to travel abroad with him.

They are to some degree reconciled with their elder sister Cordelia, who, after being forced to face the fact that she lacked the emotional understanding of music needed to make it a career, had found happiness as the wife of a successful man.

Many of the things that Rebecca West did so well in the books that came before this one are present again. Her prose is rich and vivid, full of sentences and expressions to treasure. She presents extended scenes and long conversations so very well. Her understanding of her characters emotions and situations is so very good, and I couldn’t doubt for a moment that she was writing about a world and about people that were utterly real and alive for her.

There are weaknesses though. Rosamund’s marriage was as inexplicable to me as it was to Rose and Mary. The return of Miss Beaver, Cordelia’s old music teacher, seemed driven by a wish for all of the past cast to make a reappearance rather than because the story needed her. Though there seemed to be no concern for Rosamund’s mother after her daughter’s departure.

And – though I’m not sure if this is a weakness or just a difference –  Claire – the girls’ mother – and  Richard Quin brought a warmth that I missed in this book. Of course this book had to be different, it explores bereavement and grief,  but it is not as easy to love as the books that came before.

In the end – after a crisis – Rose choses to move forward and allows herself to love, while Mary choses to retreat from the world. That made wonderful sense after the time I have spent with them, and thinking about how they were alike and how they were different

Rose’s story was so beautifully executed, and I wished I could have followed it for a little longer.

‘He came towards me and I became rigid with disgust, it seemed certain that I must die when he touched me, but instead, of course, I lived.’

Mary’s story was much less complete, but it was easy to see where it was going.

The book as a whole needs editing, but just for a little more clarity; the quality of the writing is still there and it is only when it ends that the story feels incomplete.

The afterword includes the author’s notes about the previous volumes, and I loved the insight into the authors themes, ideas and plans that they gave me. It also contains note for a fourth volume that she would never write. Her plan was ambitious, I’m not convinced that she would have pulled them off, but I do wish that she had written that book.

There have been diminishing returns with this series of books, but the staring point was high and the downward slope has been gentle.

I have loved following the story of the Aubrey family, and I will miss them now I have reached the end.

‘This Real Night’ was to be the second volume of a trilogy that would tell the story of a century, but the trilogy was never completed. The first book, ‘The Fountain Overflows’ was published in 1956 but this book wasn’t published until 1984, a year after the author’s death and the final, incomplete book was published not long after, with notes suggesting what might have followed.

I loved ‘The Fountain Overflows’ and I was delighted to find that this book picked up the threads of that story not too much further into the future. I was pulled right back …

The Aubrey children have lost their  father, who left one day and never came back, but their world is stable, and their mother had been able to sell paintings that she knew were real but had led him to believe were copies for significant sums of money.

The musical daughters, Mary and Rose, were moving towards careers as concert pianists, have were studying in musical academies in London. They suffered some setbacks as they stepped out into the world, but there was nothing that really hindered their progress.

Though that is not to say that they were entirely confident.

“Every time we left our pianos the age gave us such assurances that there was to be a new and final establishment of pleasure upon earth. True that when we were at our pianos we knew that this was not true. There is something in the great music that we played which told us that promise will not be kept.”

They were determined to be independent, and unimpressed by the only alternative that might be open to them:

“Indeed marriage was to us a descent into a crypt where, by the tremulous light of smoking torches, there was celebrated a glorious rite of a sacrificial nature. Of course it was beautiful, we saw that. But we meant to stay in the sunlight, and we knew of no end which we could serve by offering ourselves up as a sacrifice.”

Their elder sister, Cordelia, saw the world rather differently. She had been heartbroken when she had been forced to face the fact that she lacked the emotional understanding of music needed to make it a career. She had picked it up and re-set her course in life, hoping for a secure future as the wife of a successful man, and fearing that her unconventional home and her inexplicably absent father would harm her prospects.

I was sorry that her sisters, her mother and her author completely failed to understand Cordelia, that they had no time or sympathy for her. She could be trying, but she really deserved better.

They had much more time for their cousin Rosamund; maybe because shared their desire for independence and was working towards a career as a nurse, and maybe because they understood that she had talents quite unlike their own. She had played chess with their father, she and her mother continued to sew to support themselves ….

The family was completed by their young brother, Richard Quinn, who seemed almost too lovely, bright and charming to be true.

The picture of family life was captivating and rich with detail. Rebecca West wrote beautifully and her writing is full of  sentences and expressions to cherish.

Familiar family friends re-appeared; the family’s social circle was small but it cut right across social classes. They often saw Mr Morpurgo,  who was both wealthy and generous, and they also regularly visited a riverside pub, where the landlord was an old family friend.

Those friendships allowed Rebecca West to say a great deal about social issues, by means of extended scenes portraying two very different visits.

This book stands alone, but you really should read ‘The Fountain Overflows’ first.

I think that  first book is stronger than this one; they are both idiosyncratic and oddly structured, but the first book was more polished, it had a stronger narrative, and I found the characters rather more engaging when they were younger. I can quite believe that Rebecca West hadn’t quite finished with her manuscript when she died.

The ending is perfectly done and heart-breaking. The passing of time has consequences, and the Great War casts a shadow.

This is a story that draws on the authors own life, without being entirely autobiographical; and it does feel authentic. That’s why I feel so attached to this family, why I can love this book for its strengths and forgive it for its weaknesses; and why I want to read the next, unfinished book to find out the future holds for the surviving members of the Aubrey family.

‘The Fountain Overflows’ was Rebecca West’s first book in twenty years; and it was to have been the first volume of a trilogy that would tell the story of her century. She didn’t live quite long enough to complete that story, but after reading this book I am eager to read the next book and to read the final, unfinished work.

This is a story that draws on the authors own life, without being entirely autobiographical; and it tells of growing up in a creative, musical family, from the perspective of one of the children of that family; a girl named Rose.

The father of the family, Piers Aubrey, was charming but he was thoughtless. He was the editor of a minor newspaper, he was a man who was ready to stand by and act on his convictions, but he was also a man who gambled away any money he earned on the Stock Exchange. He loved his wife, he loved his children, but he seemed unwilling – or unable – to accept the responsibilities that laid upon him.

His wife and his children might have resented the choices he made, they might have been disappointed in him; but they weren’t. They loved him, they appreciated his strengths, and they accepted his weaknesses as inevitable in someone who had to venture outside the musical family circle to do battle for them in a world that didn’t appreciate the things that they loved. And so they did their level best to adapt themselves to his absences, to the loss of their good furniture, to frequent changes of address, and to love the copies of family portraits that hung in the children’s bedrooms.

And, of course, it is the mother of the family who holds things together; so clearly adoring her children, her family unit, and her role as mother. She had been a concert pianist, but everything that she had put into achieving that goal was put into family life. She loved finding the right instrument for each child – the violin for Cordelia, her eldest daughter, the piano for each of her twin girls, Rose and Mary; and the flute would – some time into the story – prove to be the instrument for her young son, Richard Quinn.

The author understood – and she made me understand and appreciate – the complex ties that bound that family together.

The story opens with the family on the cusp of moving to a new home in South London, where they will be settled for quite some time. It took me a little while to get my bearings, but I was enchanted with Rose’s voice; with the mixture of the descriptive, the fanciful, and the matter-of-fact; with the intelligence and the insight; and intensity, the love and the gorgeous, child-like attentiveness to detail of it all.

I was just a little sorry that Mary seemed often to disappear; or to be a mere adjunct to Rose, who was sometimes a little too conveniently always at the centre of things.

A picture emerged, and then I was truly captivated, and drawn right into family life.

The story is peppered with incident – most notably the ridding of a cousin’s home from a poltergeist, and the case of a neighbour who has been unjustly accused of murder – but those are not the things that make this story sing.

What does make the story sing?

Well, there’s wonderful insight into the condition of childhood, and the way that, despite its genteel poverty, the family’s lives are rich and full. There’s the drawing close together of a family that is a little isolated, because it is different, because there seems to be no one close to them who understands the very special magic of the creative, artistic life.

The children’s love for each other, that endures even when Cordelia’s wish for a more conventional life maddens them, is caught perfectly. They all adore their little brother, Richard Quinn, who is bright, idiosyncratic, and utterly irresistible. They happily draw their cousin Rosamunde, who is not musical but who they recognise has other wonderful gifts, into their circle. They accept Nancy, daughter of the neighbour accused of murder, too, they are terribly sorry that she seems ungifted, but that is no obstacle to them taking to her hearts. Her difference fascinates them, and they determine that they will help her, as they will help their mother and all of those they love, when their musical gifts rescue them from poverty. They have such wonderful, unwavering faith that they will succeed.

The darkness of the material world, where their father must do battle, is set against the warmth and love of the home that their mother creates. That is why he can always be forgiven. But as the children grow things change. Cordelia could play, but she could not truly understand her music, and so, of course, she could never be a professional musician. Her mother understood that but Cordelia couldn’t, and her pretensions were fostered by an a teacher who had just the same weaknesses. The playing out of this strand is particularly well judged; the contrast between the mother who saw and the teacher who didn’t, and judged the mother harshly, is striking; and I was devastated for Cordelia when she finally came to understand.

That final drama led this novel to its own conclusion.

Taken as a whole it feel idiosyncratic, but that feels right because it is catching all of the twists and turns of lives lived. There were times when it made my heart sing, and there were times when I thought it might break. The writing is so lovely, and it speaks so profoundly of family and musicality, that I was lost when I reached the final page and my life and those lives moved apart.