George grubbed. The flower blazed between angles of the roots. Membrane after membrane was torn. It blazed a soft yellow, a lambent light under a film of velvet; it filled the caverns behind the eyes with light. All that inner darkness became a hall, leaf smelling, earth smelling, of yellow light. And the tree was beyond the flower; the grass, the flower and the tree were entire. Down on his knees grubbing he held the flower complete.

This is my eleventh work of Woolf's, and despite not having read to entirety even the novel section of her vast bibliography, I feel in a way that I have come full circle between my introduction to [b:The Voyage Out|148905|The Voyage Out|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328874751s/148905.jpg|1412170], her first (although there's [b:Melymbrosia|741136|Melymbrosia|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328748254s/741136.jpg|944744] to consider), and this, her last. I won't say that this is perfect, as not only does Woolf stick too closely to her writerly comfort zone to allow for much brilliance, there's a spot of nastiness in the latter half of the story that cannot be excused. However,. the consequence of Woolf being so aware of her strengths and weaknesses make for a pitch perfect choice of setting and structure and trellis upon which to nurture her script upon, such that she is able to touch upon the full historical spread of [b:Orlando|18839|Orlando|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1443118010s/18839.jpg|6057225] without barely a hint of suspension of disbelief, the odes to aesthetics of [b:Mrs. Dalloway|14942|Mrs. Dalloway|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1479336522s/14942.jpg|841320] without the severe tragedy of WWI, the incoming doom of [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439492320s/46114.jpg|6057263] without the sometimes alienating storminess of the flow and plunge. It's certainly not her best, but it is such a perfectly balanced portrait of what it means for writing to be 'Woolfean' that I would fully recommend as someone's introduction to the writer if it weren't so much Woolf's novelistic farewell.

Of course, there's the whole of English literature to choose from. But how can one choose? Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read, what I haven't read.

If Woolf wasn't inspired by Hamlet in the writing of this, I'll eat my hat. I also, for reasons of personal taste, got very strong vibes of the movie adaptation of Waters' [b:The Little Stranger|7234875|The Little Stranger|Sarah Waters|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407105269s/7234875.jpg|5769396] (I haven't read the book, but I just might, as the film continues to haunt me) for this, although while that more modern rendition is the horrific fallout of Britain's aristocratic dream, this is the heyday winding down into slow, and yet behind the scenes unstable, retirement of the benevolent nobility and their earnest villagers. I'm apparently not yet cynical enough to not find Woolf's pantheon of Victorian matrons watching the world enter WWII heartbreakingly nostalgic, so with her customary flights of prose that will forever constitute my bread and butter, I was half in love with some of the characters, half put out by some of the more odious results of limitations of typical Anglo/Eurocentrism, half in mourning as one particular character's self-destructive throes combined with incoming storm building on the continent that is soon, even in the 1939 of the novel's setting and especially in 1941 during the novel's publication, to become much, much, much worse. Knowing what I do about Woolf's motivations, I even see some of her in the life-of-the-party Manresa, for Leonard Woolf, passing on the final judgment of whether this novel without its final edits could be considered complete in the wake of his wife's plunge into the Seine, was Jewish. I wouldn't defend any instance of her anti-Semitism discovered in her work (especially considering her use of the n-word in this particular work), but she and Leonard obviously lived and worked together to a unique pitch of perfection rarely seen in couples and even more so in literary ones (the husband more often than not engulfing the wife in the halls of ivory tower remembrance as if in revenge of the fate of male praying mantis' at the hands of their female mates), so in terms of what she gave and the fears she had as Hitler approached (her name was also, in addition to her husband's, on that list of Jewish people and Jewish associated people in England that the Nazis had their hands on), I'd say, whatever hurt she gave out, she at least balanced it somewhat with good.

For I hear music, they were saying. Music wakes us. Music makes us see the hidden, join the broken. Look and listen. See the flowers, how they ray their redness, whiteness, silverness and blue. And the trees with their many-tongued much syllabling, their green and yellow leaves hustle us and shuffle us, and bid us, like the starlings, and the rooks, come together, crowd together, to chatter and make merry while the red cow moves forward and the black cow stands still.

I have a good seven more books of unread Woolf on my shelves, , and after this, I am more committed to reading them than I have been in a while. I've had my rough spots (still debating whether to lower my rating for [b:Jacob's Room|225396|Jacob's Room|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388466257s/225396.jpg|3272732] or not), but she's still lasted longer in the face of a more vigorous pursuit than I have attempted with any author in my adult years (the idiot decision of Goodreads to get rid of the Most Read Authors stats feature at least got rid of evidence of my having read sixty-one of R.L. Stein's works, at least). I understand that her writing is bigoted and blinkered in more than one area as evidenced by just this one novel, but she has come the closest to my soul than any other author, and it'd take a great deal to wrench her away and make me believe I did not have a debt to repay. I don't plan on reading any more of her works this year, but I have also been more conservatively strategic about my challenge plans, so I'll have at least half the year or so to devote to far less hindered reading. I'd also like to acquire even more of her works, especially the diaries and essays, as the more I read of the mainstream, the more I am drawn to the collected bits and bobs and on and on, so it won't hurt to glance through the ever present Woolf section of the sale more than I have been doing of late. That, however, is for this weekend. For now, I am satisfied with what I've wrought.

Then the curtain rose. They spoke.