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A review by rachelgertrude
The Years by Virginia Woolf
4.0
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.
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.