This Real Night

It was warm as high summer, and bars of sunshine lay honey-coloured across the floor, the air above them shimmering with motes; and bees droned about a purple branch of viburnum in a vase on the mantlepiece.

Rebecca West's haunting novel This Real Night is actually the second volume of a trilogy but can be read and enjoyed without reading The Fountain Overflows which comes before. Set in Edwardian England, sisters Mary, Rose, Cordelia and their cousin Rosamund try to make sense of a world on the brink of war. Although the novel has an impending sense of doom, West has humour and a terrific eye for detail whether she is describing the fashions of the day or the flowers in her garden.