The Years:

Virginia Woolf's last novel published during her lifetime was also her most popular with contemporary readers, even though it doesn't shine as brightly as her more Modernist novels with readers today. The book tells the story of the Pargiters, an upper-middle-class London family, from 1880 to "the present day" (aka 1937). Each chapter takes on a year in the life of three sets of cousins, their parents, and their children and the narrative weaves in and out of different character's perspectives along with vivid descriptions of their London environment and (quite poetically) the weather.

The relatively straightforward narrative hearkens back to Woolf's early novels like The Voyage Out and Night and Day, but there is a lot more going on here than in her early works. Layers of family relationships, class and gender roles, historical events, and technological changes combine into a trajectory where both the reader and the characters become unmoored -- desperate to connect with each other, but unable to break through. That may sound a little grim, and in places it really is, but the depth of characterization and Woolf's wonderful ability to write about families and friends as they age, as well as her obvious modeling of some characters on her own friends and family, gives the novel a human center that keeps it from losing all its optimism.

This book was originally conceived as an experimental novel-essay where fictional chapters would alternate with non-fiction essays discussing societal structures that lead to the oppression of women (illustrated by the fictional narrative). She ended up abandoning this project and moving the fiction portion into the 1880 section of The Years and the essays into her next book, Three Guineas. An edition of her original novel-essay draft was published as The Pargiters and you better believe I'll be reading that next! ( )