Rose Macaulay (Magill Book Reviews)

No fiction could conjure up a figure as contradictory and exuberant as Rose Macaulay, whose writing career developed over fifty years from slim satirical comedies to the creation of one of the finest novels of this century, THE TOWERS OF TREBIZOND (1956). This biography clearly traces that development using extensive documentation of Rose’s literary family and friends. Happily, Macaulay’s art flowered with her last writings, thus giving dramatic shape to the work of biographer Jane Emery. The twists and turns of Macaulay’s intellectual life trace the complexities of this century, revealing Rose as an oddly stoic figure; as her friend Alan Pryce-Jones stated, “Nobody ever zig-zagged more, either driving a car or walking through life; yet the essential part of her was still.”

Macaulay’s father was a failed academic who worked on independent projects all his life. Rose’s formative experience as a child was the seven years the family lived in a small village in Italy. There, Rose and her brothers and sisters created a perfect fantasy life of play and sunshine far away from the restrictions of English schools, churches, and society. Rose’s independence was nurtured there; she was also a free-thinker who bridled at political or sociological generalizations. She had learned early to think for herself and to create her own world.

After her own academic disappointment, Rose began writing, slowly developing her peculiar, original style of comic satire. Her vivacity made her a popular figure in London literary circles, and she became a familiar voice on the radio and in the press. Despite her reputation for frivolity, however, she was deeply interested in religion throughout her life. Her adult life was shaped by a twenty-four-year affair with a married man, the writer and lapsed priest, Gerald O’Donovan. Rose’s moral and religious guilt over this affair was a lifelong struggle for her. Only after Gerald’s death, with her return to the Anglican Church and the writing of her final novel THE TOWERS OF TREBIZOND, did she come to grips with that struggle.

Emery’s entertaining and revealing biography enhances Macaulay’s sprawling, free-wheeling writing career by shaping it. We can see the sweep of a lifework that at first glance seems frivolous yet which ends with a novel that is Macaulay’s moral, comedic, and personal capstone. It is rare when a life—or a biography—has such a happy shape.

Sources for Further Study

Contemporary Review. CCLIX, December, 1991, p. 331.

The Guardian. June 13, 1992, p. 26.

London Review of Books. XIV, February 27, 1992, p. 19.

The New Leader. LXXV, October 5, 1992, p. 15.

The New York Times Book Review. XCVII, September 13, 1992, p. 1.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIX, July 13, 1992, p. 38.

The Spectator. CCLXVI, June 15, 1992, p. 26.

The Times Literary Supplement. June 28, 1992, p. 28.