The Extraordinary Life of Rebecca West

January 27, 2014
Gibbs (Lady Hester) unfortunately misses the mark in this desultory and bland retelling of the long and storied life of a significant literary and cultural figure of the 20th century. Born CicelyIsabel Fairfield in 1892, West first tried a theatrical career, then turned to writing (taking Rebecca West as her pen name), and became involved with political movements, including the fight for women’s suffrage, and worked as a novelist, critic, and journalist well into her old age. Her long, tumultuous affair with the married H.G. Wells, with whom she had a son, proves a central thread, with Wells emerging as a caddish figure. Despite the promising subject, West’s life reads as a dreary stream of unhappy love affairs, illness, and strained familial relations, including with her troubled, angry son, Anthony. The era’s famous figures make the briefest of cameos: D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Agnes de Mille, the Prince of Wales, and Wallis Simpson. Gibbs’s account also falls short of critically assessing West’s work and her sometimes controversial political views, such as her rabid anti-communist sentiment. A few moments give the reader hope, as when Gibb discusses West’s non-fiction masterpiece about Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, but these are short-lived. Photos.

March 15, 2014
Scottish chronicler Gibb (Lady Hester: Queen of the East, 2005) presents Rebecca West (1892-1983) in all her contradictory melodrama, unflinching political vision and trailblazing feminism. However, there is a frustrating lack of depth regarding the context of West's writing and a great deal about her personal shenanigans and relations with her son and her lovers. A British journalist of the finest caliber, who gave us prescient, shimmering dispatches from Yugoslavia (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, 1941), the Nuremberg trials and others, West was also so virulently anti-communist that she wrote sympathetic articles about Sen. Joseph McCarthy's investigations and was roundly excoriated for it. Born Cicely Isabel Fairfield to an Irish father who more or less abandoned the family of three daughters, leaving his capable, educated and musical wife to settle in her native Edinburgh, the young protagonist fell in early with the cause of the suffragettes and failed in her first career as an actress. As a firebrand journalist--she quickly grasped the necessity of changing her pen name when her mother complained about her feminist causes, and she thereby used as nom de plume a character from Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm--West caught the eye of the philandering novelist H.G. Wells, who was older and married. Their scandalous love affair produced a son, Anthony, and it is difficult to tell from Gibb's account who exactly was to blame for the lifelong animosity between mother and son. In any case, extraordinarily versatile in her work, West wrote both a critical biography of Henry James and numerous novels, beginning with her debut, The Return of the Soldier (1918). During her long life, West was acquainted or worked with many of the most notable figures from her age, from Emma Goldman to Roberto Rossellini to Warren Beatty. A generous, mostly gratifying life, but a question remains: What drove this deeply committed author?

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 15, 2014
Numerous biographies have been published about the England-born author, journalist, and critic Cicely Isabel Fairfield (1892-1983), otherwise known as Rebecca West. But Gibb (visiting research fellow, Essex Univ.; "Lady Hester") offers a fresh look at a writer who was ahead of her time in the early 20th century. West ("The Return of the Soldier") had many successes but also experienced heartache and struggle. While she lived an accomplished career, had many love affairs, including one with H.G. Wells that produced an illegitimate son, and was wed for over three decades to banker Henry Maxwell Andrews, she also encountered a challenging childhood, a strained relationship with her son, and issues in her marriage. Gibb's passion for her subject is illustrated in the writing's rich detail; readers feel like they're witnessing the described accounts firsthand. Using West's correspondences and personal papers, media interviews, and conversations with the writer's friends and employees, the author captures West's point of view and describes how this complicated individual interpreted her relationships and experiences. VERDICT Gibb succeeds in offering an accurate, honest study of a multifaceted woman in this excellent biography. It will particularly appeal to British literary and historical enthusiasts.--Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Media, PA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2014
Cicely Isabel Fairfield, born in London in 1892, had to leave school at 16. Rebellious and independent, she thought the stage was her destiny, but, drawn to the suffragist cause and the socialist Fabian Society, she began to write, lifting a pseudonym, Rebecca West, from an Ibsen play and quickly making her mark as a critic. At 18, she wrote a blistering review of a novel by H. G. Wells, which led to a heated and messy affair with the married, notoriously unfaithful celebrity writer. West's tragic relationship with their much-wronged son, Anthony, is a dark thread running throughout Gibb's meticulous biography. In spite of persistent sexism, poor health, and myriad hardships, all diligently chronicled here, West worked nonstop, traveling widely and achieving fame for her coverage of the Nuremburg trials, a dozen novels, and many books of nonfiction, including the now-classic book on the Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941). Avid yet methodical, Gibb offers scant insights into West's writing, concentrating instead on her magnetic subject's complex personality and all the drama and controversy that make West's life truly extraordinary. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)