A review by rjleamon11
This Real Night by Rebecca West

3.0

This Real Night is the sequel to The Fountain Overflows, taking the Aubrey family through about 5 years after their dad disappears from the picture and the family begins to find its way along. It's an uneven book: the first part d---r----a----g----g----e----d---- along, with huge paragraphs of description and monologues by Richard Quin on all kinds of issues. The ending was devastatingly sad but suddenly intensely powerful, giving a vivid picture into what it was like to be the ones who stayed at home during the start of WWI, and also providing an intense, detailed, and weirdly involving look into a death in a close-knit family (those two events are unrelated. I'm not giving anything away) when such things always occurred at home, not in a hospital. So the mid-range evaluation is an average of "didn't like it" at the start to "it was amazing" (but not cheerful) at the end. . . . Now I"m torn about reading the third one, but I bet I will, just to tie up the loose ends.