The Fountain Overflows is Miss Rebecca West's first novel for twenty-one years and is indeed only her sixth work of fiction. That this should be so is no doubt the price she has had to pay for her versatility as a writer. Are we to think of her primarily as a brilliant reporter, a great journalist? That she certainly is. But during her career as a writer she has played many parts: she has been, among other things, an admirable literary critic and a wonderfully astringent reviewer. Yet the publication of The Fountain Overflows proves that what she is above all, and what she ought to be, is a novelist; and in the light of this new novel, it is impossible not to regret her long years of absence from fiction.

It is not news that Miss West possesses a most formidable intelligence. Intellectually, she is, one feels...