The Years describes three generations of a London family, the Pargiters, as they navigate the mid-1800’s to 1930. The focus here is on commonplace, even trivial, events, while all about them the details of 80-odd years of English history unfold. Wars, death, marriages, loss, empire, social changes are all around the edges, but mostly what we see are intimate moments of personal relationships, disappointments, desire, and imperfect humanity.

The dailiness and particularity of Woolf’s prose always appeals to me, but especially in autumn and winter, when I seem to require extra kinship for my melancholy heart. Her tales are all close observance, very little action. This one in particular feels as though, on a walk through your neighborhood at night, you are peering in the windows of a few different houses, watching the inhabitants in the midst of the small dramas of their lives, and then you return a few years later, and then also again. In other words, it’s the kind of story which I suspect primarily appeals to the adult who was once a child constantly in trouble for staring at strangers on buses and listening to the private conversations of couples seated next to their family at restaurants. I’m still that child, endlessly fascinated by humans and their complex inner worlds, wondering what they will do or say next and why.