Woolf's writing continues to be a revelation and feels like being disorientated by a master prestidigitator. ( )

This is the only Virginia Woolf novel I have read, so I have no idea if it is representative of her work. I found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it, which is usually a good sign, but I also found it very put-downable. Isa drove me mad with her inability to think or speak other than using quotations, but I loved very much the 'Where there's a Will, there's a Way' performance, with its omitted scene in which the entire plot happens. Not much in the way of plot in the novel as a whole, and I am left wondering what the point of this story was, but no doubt the course I am studying will reveal this. ( )

I can't recall much, after all those years since I read it. ( )

“But she had nothing. She had forbidden music. Grating her fingers in the bark, she damned the audience. Panic seized her. Blood seemed to pour from her shoes. This is death, death, death, she noted in the margin of her mind; when illusion fails. Unable to lift her hand, she stood facing the audience.

And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse.

No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black, swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears. Tears. Tears.”

This was Virginia Woolf's last book -- finished but not completely edited before she ended her life in March 1941, and published by her husband shortly after her death. She gives us the story of a family living on a country estate in England and hosting the annual local pageant -- a play put on by the people in the community to raise money for the church. The household consists of the elderly Bartholomew Oliver and his sister Lucy Swithin, Mr. Oliver's son, Giles, and Giles' wife Isa and their young son. Before the pageant, two unexpected guests turn up for lunch -- the flirtatious and unconventional Mrs. Mansresa and her friend, an artist, William Dodge. Mrs. Manresa flirts with Giles and Isa gets jealous, but also can't get the thought of a local gentleman farmer out of her head.

In true VW fashion, we move in and out of all the character's heads through the course of the book. We also break from the action of the book to watch the play with the rest of the audience, stopping for a tea break and a brief rain storm. We get a healthy dose of social criticism, particularly in the interplay between the locals watching the play, and no one examines the human drama of aging and the patina our histories leave on our present day better than Virginia Woolf. Written as England entered the war, this is sometimes a dark novel, and often very melancholy, but it it is dark and melancholy in the way of real families, relationships, and personalities. I really liked it. ( )

This turned out a lot better then I thought it was gonna be. This is her last and unfinished novel, so I wasn't expecting much. In fact, I was expecting this to be depressing and have a reference about killing herself, but it was surprisingly upbeat and funny.

Unlike her previous book The Years, this one can be read in one day. It's fast and I think it's meant to be read like a play. This is a play within a novel type of deal, so it's a frame story I guess. It's much like her other works where she mixes genres.

With this novel too, you can tell Virginia Woolf had bipolar. Her previous novel was so off from this one and before that, flush was similar to this one. None of her books are the same and they all have different moods if you try to read them in the order she wrote them.

I have read all but one of her novels (because I can't find the edition I want), so as of now I'm finished with her novels. I still need to read her essays and diaries. Love the fact this woman wrote just abut anything and not for money either, because she love to write. One of the many reasons she my idol. ( )