Hyvä lopetus. Kannatti jatkaa, vaikka vähän pitkäveteinen olikin keskeltä.

Listened to this as an audio book and really wish I hadn’t as the narrator massively spoiled the whole thing for me. So much of Woolf’s brilliance is in the nuance in her prose, in her characters’ delivery, and the subtle wit and humour beneath everything. That just didn’t come across in the audio book and the characters all felt flat, one dimensional, and just generally quite annoying. I lost interest in a lot of the plot just because of this and that’s such a shame as there were some passages I knew I would’ve loved if it had been in my head. Never mind, a lesson for me to sample audio books in the future before piling in.

Although this novel covers almost 50 years, it is a novel of immediacy. We visit the extended Pargiter family on specific days in their lives: one day in 1880, one day in 1891, one day in 1917, and so on. This gives the novel a painterly feel: we see a series of images of the family, and witness how it changes over time, but we don't see exactly how events have unfolded. This gives the book a feeling of presence: the moment is vitally important to Woolf, and how a particular chair makes the character feel at a particular point in time is more important than how the character's parents died. At times, this works very well and creates a tension and emotional intimacy, but it can also be frustrating: I meet a character that interests me, and then she vanishes and isn't mentioned again. The influence of The Waves can be seen on this book: in writing about the development of personhood over time, she picks up on similar themes, as well as the sense of the external environment and its place in the psyche. However, The Years is a more accessible book than The Waves: structurally, it's not so experimental, and the interplay of characters is written in a way that's easier for the reader to get to grips with. This isn't a criticism of either book: they're getting to a similar place from different angles. The Years feels very distilled: while it covers a lot of time, each scene is carefully rendered and clear. The last 50 or so pages of the book let it down a little: the writing feels repetitive, and Woolf doesn't get to the heart of character with the same clarity as she did in the rest of this book. This is disappointing, because such an emotional yet controlled book demands a thought-provoking conclusion, but it shouldn't dismiss the rest of Woolf's achievements in this novel.

Not going to happen. Sorry.