3.5

I’m not sure how to review this work, or even how to get a handle on it. I reread some of my friends’ reviews from years ago, and I see they also struggled and/or were frustrated by it.

I think I prefer the style in the beginning, chapters dedicated to a particular year, better than the last section, “Present Day,” where all the living characters are brought together at a party. Neither style is difficult. They’re just different. I appreciated quite a bit of the last section, so I’m not sure what I’m “complaining” about, except that, maybe, the whole didn’t gel for me.

A couple of these reviewers said they struggled to finish the book. I never felt that, but then I read it on a very slow schedule with an online group, and it never felt arduous or even tedious. Only a few in the group expressed some bewilderment at specific junctures. Most of them seem to have connected with this work more than I did, though I want to emphasize I enjoyed its prose and themes. It’s Woolf after all.

It likely deserves a reread and I have just the friend to join in with when that time arrives.