I was surprised to find this was probably my first reading of this. I will reread it at a later date when I may well revise my views. Clearly an experimental novel it is a stunning presentation of the lives around an individual but I came out not sure just how coherent it was. Was there an empty space in the middle, or was this deliberate? I will doubtless find out.

Choice quotes:

"...the words issuing from her lips like crumbs of dry biscuit."

"...serious six-penny weeklies written by pale men in muddy boots—the weekly creak and screech of brains rinsed in cold water and wrung dry—melancholy papers."

'Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.'

Another masterpiece by Woolf.

3.5/5

Fix your eyes upon the lay's skirt; the grey one will do—above the pink silk stockings. It changes; drapes her ankles—the nineties; then it amplifies—the seventies; now it's burnished red and stretched above a crinoline—the sixties; a tiny black foot wearing a white cotton stocking peeps out. Still sitting there? Yes—she's still on the pier. The silk now is sprigged with roses, but somehow one no longer sees so clearly. There's no pier beneath us. The heavy chariot may swing along the turnpike road, but there's no pier for it to stop at, and how grey and turbulent the sea is in the seventeenth century! Let's to the museum. Cannon-balls; arrow-heads; Roman glass and a forceps green with verdigris.

This was and was not exactly what I expected. Proto-Woolf it is indeed, but I tended towards assuming there would be more of the best than the worst in that category. It may very well be the nadir of her bibliography (I've read enough of it to feel comfortable enough to judge), but it is still a Woolfian nadir, and so the thrills and dives and sudden widening voids of pleasure and utmost despair are there, if filled with jerks and incompletely flung motions of thought. In light of those flaws, 'Jacob's Room' is actually more difficult than [b:Mrs. Dalloway|14942|Mrs. Dalloway|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1479336522s/14942.jpg|841320], or even [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439492320s/46114.jpg|6057263], given how much more closely the texts align with their author's aims, so I wouldn't recommend this as an introduction. Indeed, I'm only able to forgive it on the strength of having experienced what is to come.

And forever the beauty of young men seems to be set in smoke, however lustily they chase footballs, or drive cricket balls, dance, run, or stride along roads. Possibly they are soon to lose it.

Women, and a man. Perhaps this is the reason why I remember 'Jacob's Room' lurking about my shelves but little of it in academic texts in one for or another. I can't remember a single mention of it in Lee's [b:Virginia Woolf|18846|Virginia Woolf|Hermione Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327984731s/18846.jpg|1328976], an unusual circumstance when what I paid attention to the most was the currents of emotion that heralded and accompanied and exalted through to the end of every work written by the titular personage. There's also the matter that I found the book far more...exterior than I had imagined. It's not the first time I assumed from a title that the contents would be a digressive tour around an interior space, only to be baffled by foreign countries and outward facing temperaments. I also find most romances incredibly boring as well as draining, hinging as they commonly do on little interaction and even less simultaneous character development (Bonamy came off as far more credible than Fanny or Clara or Florinda, but that's to be expected under the circumstances), so I'm glad Woolf stopped messing around with those later on. Along with the flighty passages through Italy and Greece, it felt incomplete, and I would have much preferred staying in the seaside of Jacob's youth. That might be my [b:To the Lighthouse|59716|To the Lighthouse|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1346239665s/59716.jpg|1323448] bias talking, though.

But language is wine upon his lips.

I could get through the nearly ten or so Woolf works I have on hand within the next month or so if I so desired, but familiarity breeds contempt like nothing else when it comes to text. It's interesting to observe that this autodidactory indulgence of mine hasn't motivated equivalent academic interest. I've no inclination to study Woolf for the rest of my life, or at least not myopically. This may be the result of a subconscious desire to render my amateur analysis sacrosanct, feeding my more official duties with authors I am less emotionally invested in and keeping the intensely personal personas personal. It would admittedly be engaging to dive into the contemporary world of Woolfian discourse, but I've enough books to do that on my own.

The strange thing about life is that through the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left an adequate account of it.

P.S. Woolf did the "Is Now Diamonds" meme first, and that's amazing.