How to start: Rebecca West is an acclaimed British author with an impressively long Wikipedia entry. The Birds Fall Down is a “spy thriller based on the deeds of the historical double agent Yevno Azef”.
Favourite quotes: “That taught me a lesson I’ve always found it useful to remember if I have to deal with difficult men. When they are hard they are probably dealing with things they do not understand. If one brings them back to what is familiar to them they become soft.” (p. 23)
“His voice was strong now that he had re-established the importance of his grief.” (p. 78)
“‘When there is a great tragedy, all other things should go well,’ he sighed. ‘It’s not fair, having to look after all sorts of secondary matters as well.’” (p. 95)
“It’s often been remarked that every human activity, whether it be love, philosophy, art or revolution, is carried on with a special intensity in Paris. A Polish professor has found an explanation in the presence in the subsoil of the city of certain earths heavily charged with electricity. It is wonderful how science is solving all mysteries. It seemed to me that the proportion of men and women quite evidently in love was higher than would have been the case in Berlin or Zurich or St. Petersburg, but also that they were exhibiting their state more candidly than they would have done in these other capitals. They walked arm in arm, their eyes shining, and they chattered and laughed.” (p. 172)
“The glasses had come from Prague, from another honeymoon, and they had survived a hundred years, only because they were always washed in a basin lined with several layers of flannel.” (p. 175)
“Most of the crowd had dispersed, but a few people still watched him as they might have watched a cab-horse fallen in the street, with maudlin smiles of pity confused with gratification at their own pity and a cold expectation of further calamity.” (p. 213)
“…for it’s sound medical practice to put the patient’s mind to rest before we start on correcting his body.” (p. 236)
“…but their real occupation was the talk, which by jerked hands, shrugged shoulders, hands flung out palm upwards, wove the French fairytale about other people having shown an extraordinary lack of common sense. In the middle of the paved causeway children in blue overalls played gentle games. If a wrangle turned rough, parents started forward in their chairs and shot out jets of scolding, but the mellowness set in again at once. As the street darkened the sky grew brighter.” (p. 247)
“They raised their glasses to each other in gaiety which was false yet true; it was a container for their kindness to her.” (p. 268)
“She recognized what he was doing; piling up grievances to kill his sense that he was in the wrong. She often did it herself, but had hoped that she would grow out of it.” (p. 361)
“But she assumed it to be a point of honour with Chubinov not to take grace poured out generously.” (p. 422)
Tangential: Googling the title of this book leads to alarming reports and investigations of birds falling from the sky. But it comes from the line of a poem the author uses as an epigraph. But neither the poem nor the poet exist… West used a pseudonym and invented the poem herself. We know this thanks to Victoria Glendinning’s biography of West, excerpted here.