Volume 29, Number 13 · August 12, 1982
Staying the Course
By Rosemary Dinnage
The Return of the Soldier
by Rebecca West
Dial (Virago Modern Classics), 188 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy
by Rebecca West
Dial (Virago Modern Classics), 288 pp., $7.95 (paper)
The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-1917
selected and introduced by Jane Marcus
Viking, 402 pp., $25.00
1900
by Rebecca West
Viking (A Studio Book), 190 pp., $19.95
The current interest in Rebecca West's work, even if it is partly due to the pursuit of every and any feminist writer and partly homage to her age, is well deserved. But she is a critic's nightmare. How can anyone have written so well and so badly? Have worked in so many different genres? Be so resistant to fitting any particular pigeonhole? If the four books under review were representative of her life's work, she need not be taken too seriously; but in fact they are oddments from the very beginning and very end of her long writing career. One could say that they are interesting mainly because of their relation to the other books—except that it is so hard to relate the different parts of her work to each other.
Review, 3275 words
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