“But she had nothing. She had forbidden music. Grating her fingers in the bark, she damned the audience. Panic seized her. Blood seemed to pour from her shoes. This is death, death, death, she noted in the margin of her mind; when illusion fails. Unable to lift her hand, she stood facing the audience.

And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse.

No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black, swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears. Tears. Tears.”

This was Virginia Woolf's last book -- finished but not completely edited before she ended her life in March 1941, and published by her husband shortly after her death. She gives us the story of a family living on a country estate in England and hosting the annual local pageant -- a play put on by the people in the community to raise money for the church. The household consists of the elderly Bartholomew Oliver and his sister Lucy Swithin, Mr. Oliver's son, Giles, and Giles' wife Isa and their young son. Before the pageant, two unexpected guests turn up for lunch -- the flirtatious and unconventional Mrs. Mansresa and her friend, an artist, William Dodge. Mrs. Manresa flirts with Giles and Isa gets jealous, but also can't get the thought of a local gentleman farmer out of her head.

In true VW fashion, we move in and out of all the character's heads through the course of the book. We also break from the action of the book to watch the play with the rest of the audience, stopping for a tea break and a brief rain storm. We get a healthy dose of social criticism, particularly in the interplay between the locals watching the play, and no one examines the human drama of aging and the patina our histories leave on our present day better than Virginia Woolf. Written as England entered the war, this is sometimes a dark novel, and often very melancholy, but it it is dark and melancholy in the way of real families, relationships, and personalities. I really liked it.