Short or long, any fiction of Woolf is worth reading. ( )

This is an interesting, but I feel fundamentally flawed collection of short fiction by Virginia Woolf. As explained in the preface, many of her shorter works were experiments and exercises in technique, form, and composition that she would use namely to exert her skills in her novels. They feel a little unrefined and many, in my opinion, do not stand very tall or serve as great pieces in themselves. That is why I have given the collection this rating.

2.5 stars. ( )

I'm not afraid of Va Woolf. Reading her on and off for 40 years, her prose still resonants beauty, a visualness that I particularly seek when choosing to spend my free time in escape. ( )

Does what it says on the package: this is all the shorter prose Virginia Woolf wrote, in a straight chronological order. Such a broad and unedited spread is of course an uneven read – these stories were never meant to be read back to back in this order. And there are indeed both ups and downs here. I like the ones that have that Woolf feel, like the stories that take place at Clarissa Dalloway’s party, but find it interesting that I’m more drawn to the earliest stories, or the late ones Woolf dismissed as “bread writing for the American audience”. Those are straighter, more of stories and less of tableaus or streams of consciousness.

There are some real gems in here, for sure, but for me too many of these stories are slippery, vague and hard to focus on. Quite a few I wouldn’t be able to give a summary of ten minutes after I finished them, even if someone held a gun to my head. This is a Woolf book for real fans and completists. If you’re only going to read three books by Virginia Woolf (which you should), this probably isn’t one of them. ( )

An essential addition to any Virginia Woolf fan, all her shorter fiction gathered together in one volume. The stories here date from 1917 - 1941 and cover a wide range of styles. Among the stories are KEW GARDENS, THE MARK ON THE WALL, LAPPIN AND LAPINOVA and A HAUNTED HOUSE. ( )