The Years |
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Author:
| Woolf, Virginia |
ISBN: | 978-1-7932-9620-7 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2019 |
Publisher: | Independently Published
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $18.99 |
Book Description:
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The novel traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s. Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' lives. Except for the first, each section takes place on a single day of its titular year, and each year is defined by a particular moment in the cycle of seasons. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes as a transition within sections,...
More DescriptionThe novel traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s. Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' lives. Except for the first, each section takes place on a single day of its titular year, and each year is defined by a particular moment in the cycle of seasons. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes as a transition within sections, Woolf describes the changing weather all over Britain, taking in both London and countryside as if in a bird's-eye-view before focusing in on her characters. Although these descriptions move across the whole of England in a paragraph, Woolf only rarely and briefly broadens her view to the world outside Britain.The longest of all Virginia Woolf's books, The Years is unlike any of her other novels in several ways. It is straightforward, easy to understand; it is an attempt to do what many other contemporary writers have done, to make a family rather than an individual the hero of a novel. Necessarily 'society', the relation of the individual to society, occupies a far more prominent place in The Years than in any of her other novels. The book, as soon as it was published, had a great success, and was hailed as a masterpiece, not merely by many of the reviewers, but by such a critical friend as J.M. Keynes. For many weeks it stood at the top of the list of bestsellers in the New York Herald-Tribune