It’s May! And the spring feels like a revelation. It’s a season associated with new beginnings, but this week I wanted to draw your attention to the end of my Virginia Woolf project. The Virginia Woolf project, as I described it in my first instalment, was a self-imposed project to read all nine novels that Woolf wrote. More than a year later, I’ve accomplished my task and felt like writing a Substack entry to commemorate it. I do think that Virginia Woolf is one of the most important and touching writers I’ve ever had the privilege of reading, and I wanted to compile my thoughts on her work as well as providing a jumping in point for anyone curious about her writing. So much in my life has changed since i read Orlando but loving Woolf hasn’t.
THE NOVELS
BOOK #1: ORLANDO ★★★☆☆
“This book has truly exceptional prose and style throughout, a testament to Woolf's skill, and an interesting first act that introduces some interesting personalities. There are also several interesting quotes and observations on the peculiarities of human character that entice me into this particular authorial style. However, and I hate to say this given how much I enjoyed the authorial voice, this book drags as it goes on. The plot is very led by 'tell, don't show,' and while this is charming and irreverent when things are happening [...] it comes to drone near the end.” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #2: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE ★★★★★
“The real appeal of Woolf's fiction is her writing, her style, her prose—it's through this medium that we get a sense of her characters, her ideas, all filtered through the loveliest language you've ever read. You have to force yourself to slow down with To the Lighthouse, because Woolf isn't someone you can cram down your throat like a box of bonbons. Her writing deserves to be soaked in, appreciated, watched in awe. I loved reading this book, it was exceptional. (Furthermore, despite the fact that's it's not typically 'exciting' or action-based, I found myself racing through the final pages.)” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #3: MRS DALLOWAY ★★★★☆
“The things I liked about this book are its greatest strengths: the meditative reflections and histories of the characters accompanied with the lyrical and intelligent prose. Woolf sheds light on the society she lived in with adept and focused storytelling, which provides benefit through the understanding of a historical place. I especially liked the way she talked about mental illness (although not in those words) and the role of women in society, although she did not come across as preaching or sermonising to the audience she aimed to interest.” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #4: THE WAVES ★★★★☆
“For lack of a better word, The Waves feels like a dream. You wander around a plain filled with people, listening to their stories while waves (sorry, it is genuinely relevant) crash in the background. While you may not be able to puzzle out what the story means to each specific person, or even what they mean to say from a chronological point of view, you feel a deep transfer of emotion while absorbing the story. It does take a while to get into it (hence 4.5 as opposed to 5) but once you're in, you're done for. Naturally, this absorption is assisted by the insane calibre of Virginia Woolf's prose. I cannot stress this enough: Woolf was an utter genius who deserves to be taught alongside Orwell, Salinger, and Shakespeare.” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #5: THE VOYAGE OUT ★★★★☆
“Despite the flaws in the key romance that one might pick up on as a reader from the twenty-first century, there can be no doubt that the bloom and joy of a first love is captured with compassion and understanding. I was swept away by the beauty of the descriptions and the understanding between the characters. Within chapters, I went from not anticipating the connection the characters would have to being invested in them as a couple. It was a marvellous thing to watch unfold, and I'm being intentionally vague because I do think that the appeal will be increased if you go into it blind.” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #6: THE YEARS ★★★★☆
“The introduction to this novel I read informs me that Woolf intended to write a 'novel-essay', which I cannot in good conscience term the result. I would hesitate to say that sweeping social claims are made, or that I found a truly meaningful analysis of British society. She isn't an epic writer, and I wouldn't say that she ever was—in the sense of the word where it means grand in scale. Rather, The Years reads as a series of impressions from a large cast of characters, each day plucked from their lives without enormous significance. We don't read about marriages, grand battles, or births. Instead an elderly servant goes home and learns the war has ended. This is the magic of her writing. This is what makes me want to read Virginia Woolf, what lets her characters live in my thoughts long after I've finished the novel. ” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #7: JACOB’S ROOM ★★★★☆
“You do not read Virginia Woolf for action, you do not read her for thrills, for a laugh, for a bedtime story. You read Virginia Woolf for the same reason you read most truly great authors—to learn to live. You see the sun set on the waves, but until you read Woolf ("...the gold tint of the sea at sunset, and thought how it lapped in coins of gold upon the shingle.") there is an element of beauty lost in your inability to describe it. She captivates, draws the element of life from the mundane, captures the rise and fall of breath in such a way that would have the reader wonder if he'd ever truly drawn it before. I afford her no less praise than I feel she deserves.” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #8: NIGHT AND DAY ★★★★★
“Some works of art resonate with you because they open your mind, because they invent a world which once had not been seen to you and now comes in a vivid vision. Other books, perhaps more rare and unwieldy, present to you a model of the world almost indistinguishable from your own. They articulate those thoughts and phrases left percolating in your brain with such candour and grace that your own observations are rendered irrelevant. Night and Day, at least for me, is the latter type. Many of the observations echoed by its unique and mesmerising cast of characters are ones that have occurred to me, yet Woolf is capable of putting them in far better language than I could ever manage.” [Read the full review.]
BOOK #9: BETWEEN THE ACTS ★★★★☆
“It is often described as a tragedy. I am in no way saying that it isn't. But speaking now as someone who has had the privilege of reading a large swath of her life's work, what strikes me the most is how grateful I am that Virginia Woolf lived. She lived. She lived and she wrote and she loved, and I don't think her life can be correctly generalised as a tragedy. To do so denies her interiority, denies the joy and hope and spark much of her writing is predicated on. But I am so, so unbelievably happy and grateful that she had the opportunity to live. What a mind. What literature. Aren't you thrilled that she lived and wrote and lived despite all that which threatened an earlier halt to her brilliance?” [Read the full review.]
BONUS ROUND: NOVEL-LENGTH ESSAYS
A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN ★★★★★
“Virginia Woolf is a brilliant writer, and her insights on the condition of women are sharp and just. She constructs an eloquent and elaborate essay, one that leaves little room for questioning and invites the reader in as though it were a novel. I felt that her ideas were not only remarkably profound in content but profound in the way that they were expressed; proving her talent for the written word along with her persuasive ability. I particularly enjoyed the sections on Jane Austen and Shakespeare's invented sister, as I felt that these were the strongest components of the essay and shed the most light on Woolf's opinions.” [Read the full review.]
THREE GUINEAS ★★★☆☆
“This is a well-written essay that lays out Woolf's personal politics with much stylistic skill and logical reasoning. However, the articulate prose could not turn me off the suspicion that the author's distaste for concise writing had finally turned out against her. I thought this book was smart and handled many complicated topics quite well; I also thought it could have been about fifty pages shorter. Much time is spent elucidating specific examples, following trains of thought to Tangent Station, and the footnotes are rife with the vice of over-explanation. It's good, but there was no reason I should have been picking it up and putting it down for a month.” [Read the full review.]
THE RANKING
To the Lighthouse
Night and Day
The Waves
The Voyage Out
Mrs. Dalloway
The Years
Between the Acts
Jacob’s Room
Orlando