The Years (1937)

"Tell me about William Whatney," she said. "When I last saw him he was a slim young man in a boat."
Peggy burst out laughing.
"That must have been ages ago!" she said.
"Not so very long," said Eleanor. She felt rather nettled. "Well -" she reflected, "twenty years - twenty-five years perhaps."
It seemed a very short time to her; but then, she thought, it was before Peggy was born. She could only be sixteen or seventeen." (pg. 205)

We've all experienced this, haven't we? This somewhat unsettling realization when something that we perceive in our minds to have occurred "not so very long" ago really happened more like two decades (and then some) in the past.

Nice to see that Virginia Woolf understood that even in 1937 when she wrote this novel.

I mean, I fall into this mind trap ALL THE TIME. I still, on more occasions than I care to admit, think 1990 was ten years ago rather than (gulp) 22 years long gone. I chalk this up to approaching my mid-40s, but after reading Virginia Woolf's novel The Years, now I'd like to look at this differently.

"They talked as if they were speaking of people who were real, but not real in the way in which she felt herself to be real. It puzzled her; it made her feel that she was two different people at the same time; that she was living at two different times in the same moment." (pg. 167)

Yep. That's it exactly. We are two different people at the same time, living at two different times in the same moment. We're a combination of our present and our past. ("What is the use, she thought, of trying to tell people about one's past? What is one's past?" (pg. 167)

Virginia Woolf's second-to-last novel The Years is a commentary about the passage of time, which she brings forth for the reader by showing her characters - members of the large, well-to-do Pargiter family and their extended family - through 1880-1918. (The last chapter is titled "Present Day," which I suppose is 1939, when the novel was published.) The Pargiters live in London, and at the beginning of the book, are in that sort of odd stage when you're just watching and waiting for a loved one to pass away. (In this case, their mother.)

Not too much happens in The Years. People visit each other, talk about their life and their travels. They sometimes die. It's a reflective, thoughtful sort of novel, and truthfully, this takes a little while to get used to - especially if you, like me, are not generally a classics reader or one who doesn't normally read novels set in this time period. (Woolf's passion for the semicolon is also more than a bit distracting.) It isn't until almost halfway through the story that you begin to see the connections among the characters, the passing of time as evidenced by the changing seasons and the weather.

Honestly, up to that point, I kind of considered abandoning this, but then I started gaining an appreciation for what Woolf was trying to say. With the exception of Mrs. Dalloway, which I absolutely loved right off the bat (kudos to one of the most awesome college English professors ever), I'm finding that this is my typical reaction to Virginia Woolf. I start off a little perplexed, a little lost and confused, and then I get immersed in the story.

Just like life, no?

"My life, she said to herself. That was odd, it was the second time that evening that somebody had talked abut her life. And I haven't got one, she thought. Oughtn't a life to be something you could handle and produce? - a life of seventy odd years. But I've only the present moment, she thought. Here she was alive, now, listening to the fox-trot. Then she looked round. There was Morris; Rose; Edward with his head thrown back talking to a man she did not know. I'm the only person here, she thought, who remembers how he sat on the edge of my bed that night, crying - the night Kitty's engagement was announced. Yes, things came back to her. A long strip of life lay behind her. Edward crying. Mrs. Levy talking; snow falling; a sunflower with a crack in it; the yellow omnibus trotting along the Bayswater Road. And I thought to myself, I'm the youngest person in this omnibus; now I'm the oldest ... Millions of things came back to her. Atoms danced apart and massed themselves. But how did they compose what people called a life?" (pg. 366-367)
( )

A lovely book, one of my favourites by the author. This book was one that you could easily lose yourself in, and is well worth reading.

One of my favourite aspects of the book were some of the descriptive passages the author had. Long, flowing and elegant passages throughout the book which not only helped paint a beautiful picture but were often symbolising something occurring with the characters and plot. These were stunning, Woolf's writing and observations shine in this book, especially with these descriptive passages.

I can't say I have a favourite character, but I did enjoy following the generations of characters throughout the timeline. As the title suggests, the book does follow the same group of characters throughout the years. I think the author did a wonderful job at portraying this as the characters are developed and the full story is told when using a large stretch of time.

The book did slow down in the second half of the book. There were a few times I was not as interested in the plot and characters in the second half as well. It seemed to be a little repetitive by this point and the story just didn't have the same spark as the first half. But by the end, I was happy. It was a very fitting ending, and helped make up for the lull in the second half of the book.

Also found on my book review blog Jules' Book Reviews - The Years ( )

Of the three novels I've read by Virginia Woolf ("The Years," "Jacob's Room" and "The Waves") this is the one I liked best. Perhaps because it has a more traditional narrative structure than the other two or because the overall theme was more obvious, I didn't feel as though I was missing some great point as I did with the other two.

"The Years" is very much about the passage of time, shown through some vignettes looking into the experiences of the Pargiter family (and their near relations.) The novel stretches from the 1880's to the 1930's, as the family ages, looks back and tries to make sense of their lives.

The characters are really interesting and the relationships between them often complex (and often only hinted at) which makes this book a fun and entertaining read. ( )

Read my review at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! ( )

Published in 1937 The Years was the title that Virginia Woolf settled on for this generational novel which begins in the 1800s and concludes in the 1900’s, between the wars. As its title suggests, it is a novel very much about time passing. Lives moving forward (and backward in memory). The Years was only one of a number of possible titles that Virginia considered, the other key possibility was ‘The Pargiters’, but on many levels this would have inferred a very different novel. A novel specific to its characters, whereas The Years communicates its universality.

This is the second time I have read this novel – as I have said in other posts, for writers like Virginia Woolf I tend to read them several times before they begin to make their full impact on me. And Woolf is one writer who for me definitely prospers from the time given to re-reading. Her writing in my opinion is like pure essence. You are subsumed in the era and the atmosphere of the world she is writing about, and this essence is as much internal, the minds – both conscious and sub-conscious of her characters. And like real people you meet, you cannot know them fully in one meeting, or perhaps fully, even in a lifetime. For me Woolf captures that conundrum. And you see it in the relationships between her characters, who, meeting years later realise how different people are or have become.

Woolf’s voices, spoken and internal are powerfully authentic, felt through her inner and spoken dialogue. She is acutely atuned to her characters, who experience the specific personal, and universal sensations.

The beginning of the novel has some of its most powerful moments for me. The character Delia who is waiting for her mother to die. She wants her mother, who is terminally ill, to get on with it and die, because life as it is, is in abeyance. Stultified and suspended Delia is locked into a moment she wants to pass. And as harsh as it seems, if you have ever had to watch someone die, you will understand how she feels. I think that there is a mother and daughter issue here as well.

She is also the character through whom you see the performances that people undertake in life. As Shakespeare says,

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”,

(As You Like It)

Delia, although young, is very aware of how people are required to act, or sense they are acting/performing in relation to each other.

For me the weakness of the novel is that after her early appearance, Delia disappears almost until the party at the end of the novel, and this is the part of the novel I was least engaged in during both readings of the book. That’s not to say that it will always be so, but somehow, when I read the last part of the novel I found my engagement somehow dissipating, like the skein’s of a fistful of unravelled wool. Moments retained the powerful sensations evoked earlier in the novel, but somehow, although in a natural way, I felt all the characters had been shoved into one room and made to tie up all the messy endings. Or to fail to. ( )