Jaaa-cob!

Meh. That's all I have to say about this one. My least favorite of all of Woolf's novels.

I might still be getting used to Virginia Woolf's writing style, and waiting too late to read this book, so I was too tired to fully understand it. But it was very confusing and convoluted. I'm glad I'm reading it in a class where we can discuss what's going on and what's important. I think, for me, that's a very valuable experience. I wouldn't have appreciated the book as much if I hadn't had that discussion.

I think it's very interesting that, for the most part, we see Jacob's entire life through the eyes of the women in his life (plus Bonamy). I love the ending. It was quite a decent book, despite being a little hard to follow at times, and I'm excited to read more Virginia Woolf.

One of my more favorite works of Woolf's. This novel follows the life of Jacob (which gives you a little more leeway than usual to help with character following). What's interesting about this book is that we see Jacob through everyone else's eyes except his own. It's almost as if Woolf built a character without an actual physical character. I remember one scene where Jacob is looking out a window, and we are seeing him from the back. It was then that I thought he was almost a ghost, and started to question his actual existence. Can all of the other characters have just made him up? Is Jacob just an illusion, a third party that the human mind makes up? Is Woolf commenting on the way a mind can build up a whole life? These theories, while they seem crazy, are the outcome of studying Woolf in depth for several months (totally not enough time for Woolf, but certainly enough time for humans who are thoroughly exhausted after a whole course on Woolf).