Reviews

The hardest thing about Virginia Woolf is getting into her text. After this initial ordeal, we let ourselves be carried away by his style – particular and very personal, it is true – made of a particularly addictive melancholic charm. When you love beautiful writing, you can't help but seduced.
The novel is in two mixed parts: the play and the text said by the actors, and the words exchanged by the inhabitants of the manor, snatches of conversations, words caught in the air, fleeting thoughts; the reader is like a guest at a reception where he knows no one, moving from group to group, picking up bits of conversation here and there. It scares you like that, and that's quite normal, but it's intriguing when you accept the situation. I use this term in each of my posts concerning Virginia Woolf because it is the one that seems most appropriate to me, corresponding to the effect that I feel is an irresistible attraction.
It's hard to read between the lines, but I try it. It is a question of England, that of a bygone era in opposition to the one which is opening and of a world between two wars, but for a short time yet, "Europe clad in cannons, flown over by planes"; duality has found in the characters, their characters are opposites (Bart Oliver and his sister), their desires diverge (Giles finds Mrs. Manresa attractive, Isa has a crush on a "man in gray" seen in the crowd), Mrs. Manresa decides by his character and his manners very accessible with the uptight British type of the local nobility. Between these situations or these acts, Virginia Woolf traces her furrow.
The day ends, and the novel continues, with a promise of a shouting match between Giles and Isa before a planned reconciliation on the pillow, perhaps a source of an additional offspring for a future England.
It's stunning; it's Virginia Woolf. But it's also a well-deserved read.