This must be a hot take but I think this is one of my favourite Woolf novels. She seeks out to demystify all the work of her earlier novels, while creating this atmosphere totally unlike that which she has explored before. As the philosopher Taylor Swift once said, "it's miserable and magical, oh yeah" and truly, that is The Years. It is terrible and sad and beautiful and incredible and none of those emotions ever contradict each other. It is a minor, 400 page miracle.

I've been afraid of Virginia Woolf for many years (bad joke unabashedly intended). I didn't think I would be able to understand or feel at home in her writing, it being too cleverly crafted, too intellectual, or too eccentric.

I was wrong, and regret waiting so long to find out.

Going to history museums when I was younger, I would notice the smell of old things: that particular cracked-leathery smell - similar to the smell of libraries and old paper. I have always wondered, "but is this what the 1910s or 20s or 30s actually smelled like? Is this the smell of the past, or is this just what old books and suitcases and train cars smell like after many years?"

Reading this book was like getting to be in an 1880s parlor and seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, what it was like to be in that room, to fray a wick on a teakettle to get it to boil sooner, to experience small details about the way people coughed, or pinched the fabric of a dress.

People always say, "It's the little things that matter." In the end, our memories are filled with those little details, such as what a room smelled like and how that smell always comes back when I hear a certain song - yet how seldom they make it into a plot of a story. They are part of the fabric of memory, but they don't fit into the dense matter - they are more an atmosphere surrounding events.

She wrote about those little things that have everything to do with the decisions we make about people's moods or thoughts, simply from body-language. She writes about our perceptions, misconceptions, the moments when we mishear things, the train our thoughts go on when we hear a certain phrase.

I see the value in Virginia Woolf, not just because Penguin Classics says her work is valuable, but because reading her writing is an entirely different experience from reading anyone else's. She writes about the nuances of expression that most writers cast off or neglect to mention simply because they seem so meaningless, so unhelpful to a step-wise plot. She notices the inconsequential moments in a day which nonetheless unearth elements of our characters, values, and ambitions.

Само защото е Вирджиния Улф се опитах да дочета докрая с прескачане на доста страници, но и за това не успях да се насиля. Прекрасни описания на града.. доста интересна идея за прескачането на годините и загатването за разни събития от живота на хората, без да се навлиза в подробности - това не е черта на класическия роман... Но, Бога ми, останалото е пълна скука, отегчение, по-досадни и безсъдържателни разговори и мисли не си спомням да съм чела отдавна. Безкрайни повторения, безинтересни личности, и общо взето роман без нищо - нито действие, нито дълбочина, нито смисъл. Пълно разочарование, отказвам да мисля за Вирджиния Улф като за автор на това нещо.

Virginia Woolf's experiment in following lives tangentially connected as years pass, seasons change, time slips, was just okay for me. Woolf describes the exterior world- its objects, its solidity - with great dexterity but I love Woolf when the interiority of characters is the focus and the outside world is all unstable. That being said, there were some timeless passages about bananas, clocks striking and my favourite description of love so far: "Part sex; part pity. Could it be love?" Many thanks V for another good one.