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sanjastajdohar's review against another edition
4.0
Here we have Woolf's second novel, a story about a young woman Rachel, a granddaughter of a famous poet, caught in a love triangle (or pentagon, depending on your view) and someone tired of the shadow her family casts on ger own life and choices. But that's just a frame of the story. This book is actually about the search for one's purpose and motivation in life. Each character we meet faces different obstacles and challenges regarding their present and future. Side-characters are actually the best ones. The feminist Mary (maybe closest to Woolf's own character) is someone who stands out the most for me.
Since this was Woolf only second novel, she is still quite traditional in her writing style, but we definitely have some glimpses into her modernist tendencies in theform of inner turmoil of the characters and the way she depicts London and its streets as a reflection on character's mind. London us almost a separate character in this story.
So, while this may not be my favorite Woolf's novel and it took a while for it to really get going, I appreciate it for wonderful language and I actually cared for the characters in the end and they made an impression on me. Their inner thoughts and insecurities were often quite relatable and extremely human and imperfect. It was a slow read, but I'm glad I've read this one.
P. S. Juliet Stevenson is simply marvelous as a narrator.
Since this was Woolf only second novel, she is still quite traditional in her writing style, but we definitely have some glimpses into her modernist tendencies in theform of inner turmoil of the characters and the way she depicts London and its streets as a reflection on character's mind. London us almost a separate character in this story.
So, while this may not be my favorite Woolf's novel and it took a while for it to really get going, I appreciate it for wonderful language and I actually cared for the characters in the end and they made an impression on me. Their inner thoughts and insecurities were often quite relatable and extremely human and imperfect. It was a slow read, but I'm glad I've read this one.
P. S. Juliet Stevenson is simply marvelous as a narrator.
franklyfrank's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
colorfulleo92's review
5.0
Even tough this book doesn't have as much of stream of consciousness as Virginia Woolf's is famous for she has a way with words like no other. She writes beautiful and with a bit of power in her words about a woman's place in the world back in the day but it's also contains a love story and some comedy. I have a big need to reread all her books now and the ones I haven't yet read.
kataract89's review against another edition
4.0
I was going to give this 3 stars, but I decided that I enjoyed how ridiculous the plot was.
Anyway, Katharine tries multiple times to break it off with William, but keeps relenting. In one memorable scene, William breaks down and has a cry under a tree, nestled against Katharine. Note that throughout William's engagement to Katharine, he's been extremely controlling out of some weird sense of insecurity, so the breakdown was somewhat satisfying, even if Katharine's capitulation wasn't.
Meanwhile, Ralph Denham, who is from a lower social class to Katharine and is described as very poor despite having more than one servant, pines away ridiculously for Katharine. His whole world is taken over by Katharine. For the longest time, however, Katharine has no idea what's going on inside Ralph's head because Ralph acts awkwardly and comes off as mean whenever he encounters Katharine. As a reminder, Ralph is around 30 years old and a law clerk. Basically, I'm trying to say that he is a grown man, but I guess even grown men can be totally afflicted by love of a teenage sort.
Finally, after much wrangling, Katharine and William secretly break off their engagement and Katharine helps William pursue her younger cousin, Cassandra. Meanwhile, everyone, including Cassandra, thinks that Katharine is still engaged to William. So understandably, when William comes on to Cassandra, Cassandra tells Katharine that she'll leave them alone at once. Katharine's reaction? Katharine's like, "Don't worry girl. But do you actually like my fiance? You can hang out with him even more." Meanwhile, Katharine finally falls in love with Ralph.
All this time, Katharine's aunt has been stalking all the lovebirds and confronts Katharine's father, Mr. Hilbery, about the situation that is bringing shame upon the family. Katharine's father throws a temper tantrum and throws everyone out of the house, except Katharine because, as Woolf helpfully notes, she lives there. He writes to his wife, Mrs. Hilbery to deal with this domestic kerfuffle. Throughout much of this kerfuffle, Katharine's mother has been away at Stratford-upon-Avon because she wanted to stand upon the bones of Shakespeare. Anyway, she is quickly recalled from her Shakespearean adventure to deal with the unwanted Shakespearean comedy happening in her house.
But when Mrs. Hilbery returns, what does she do? She sings rather incoherently about earth and water and the "sublime spirit brooding over it all" and brings the lovebirds together. Mr. Hilbery enters the scene and is horrified by how much his wife has misapprehended why he recalled her from Stratford-upon-Avon. But then, Mrs. Hilbery distracts Mr. Hilbery with a question about Shakespeare and, no joke, "The power of literature . . . now came back to him, pouring over the raw ugliness of human affairs its soothing balm," and he basically okays the situation because of Shakespeare.
One final ridiculous scene: In the penultimate chapter, Katharine and Ralph are alone at home and they exchange their written declarations of love. Ralph gives Katharine his poetical declarations of love and, no joke, Katharine gives him her arithmetic exercises. "Ralph followed her figures as far as his mathematics would let him." And then they sit in silence, in love.
Spoiler
Basically, Katharine, the protagonist, decides to get engaged with this dude, William Rodney, because she thinks that by doing so, she'll be freed from the oppression of her family and finally able to "do" mathematics and astronomy. I didn't find this motivation convincing at all because I could never understand the amateur mathematics Katharine seemed to be doing in secret. Based on Woolf's descriptions, I think she does arithmetic exercises from textbooks, but I'm not sure.Anyway, Katharine tries multiple times to break it off with William, but keeps relenting. In one memorable scene, William breaks down and has a cry under a tree, nestled against Katharine. Note that throughout William's engagement to Katharine, he's been extremely controlling out of some weird sense of insecurity, so the breakdown was somewhat satisfying, even if Katharine's capitulation wasn't.
Meanwhile, Ralph Denham, who is from a lower social class to Katharine and is described as very poor despite having more than one servant, pines away ridiculously for Katharine. His whole world is taken over by Katharine. For the longest time, however, Katharine has no idea what's going on inside Ralph's head because Ralph acts awkwardly and comes off as mean whenever he encounters Katharine. As a reminder, Ralph is around 30 years old and a law clerk. Basically, I'm trying to say that he is a grown man, but I guess even grown men can be totally afflicted by love of a teenage sort.
Finally, after much wrangling, Katharine and William secretly break off their engagement and Katharine helps William pursue her younger cousin, Cassandra. Meanwhile, everyone, including Cassandra, thinks that Katharine is still engaged to William. So understandably, when William comes on to Cassandra, Cassandra tells Katharine that she'll leave them alone at once. Katharine's reaction? Katharine's like, "Don't worry girl. But do you actually like my fiance? You can hang out with him even more." Meanwhile, Katharine finally falls in love with Ralph.
All this time, Katharine's aunt has been stalking all the lovebirds and confronts Katharine's father, Mr. Hilbery, about the situation that is bringing shame upon the family. Katharine's father throws a temper tantrum and throws everyone out of the house, except Katharine because, as Woolf helpfully notes, she lives there. He writes to his wife, Mrs. Hilbery to deal with this domestic kerfuffle. Throughout much of this kerfuffle, Katharine's mother has been away at Stratford-upon-Avon because she wanted to stand upon the bones of Shakespeare. Anyway, she is quickly recalled from her Shakespearean adventure to deal with the unwanted Shakespearean comedy happening in her house.
But when Mrs. Hilbery returns, what does she do? She sings rather incoherently about earth and water and the "sublime spirit brooding over it all" and brings the lovebirds together. Mr. Hilbery enters the scene and is horrified by how much his wife has misapprehended why he recalled her from Stratford-upon-Avon. But then, Mrs. Hilbery distracts Mr. Hilbery with a question about Shakespeare and, no joke, "The power of literature . . . now came back to him, pouring over the raw ugliness of human affairs its soothing balm," and he basically okays the situation because of Shakespeare.
One final ridiculous scene: In the penultimate chapter, Katharine and Ralph are alone at home and they exchange their written declarations of love. Ralph gives Katharine his poetical declarations of love and, no joke, Katharine gives him her arithmetic exercises. "Ralph followed her figures as far as his mathematics would let him." And then they sit in silence, in love.
thatmattcrowe's review
2.0
Akin again to Austen or North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (the latter on account of its use of contrasts), Night and Day was disowned by Woolf herself, and despite academic reprisal I get why. Compared to The Voyage Out - which I like the more it gestates - the prose is less playful, less poetic and less character driven (very few instances of free indirect speech).
It's the kind of story you could academically describe as "the interior worlds colliding with the exterior", but in practise I call it a lot of characters not saying things they should have said 200 pages ago. It tests the sympathies of the lead couple immensely, so much so I found myself gravitating to Mary the most, whose ideas on work and feminism Virginia Woolf would expand on in A Room of One's Own.
Still, it's Virginia Woolf, you are going to get beautiful observations and turns of phrase. Even if this story was not the best vessel for those words.
4.5/10
It's the kind of story you could academically describe as "the interior worlds colliding with the exterior", but in practise I call it a lot of characters not saying things they should have said 200 pages ago. It tests the sympathies of the lead couple immensely, so much so I found myself gravitating to Mary the most, whose ideas on work and feminism Virginia Woolf would expand on in A Room of One's Own.
Still, it's Virginia Woolf, you are going to get beautiful observations and turns of phrase. Even if this story was not the best vessel for those words.
4.5/10
annaelisaa's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
5.0
irreverentreader's review
2.0
Let me preface this by saying that in college I loved reading Virginia Woolf's essays. I greatly admired her ability to express herself in elegant prose and get her point across in a concise, understandable way. But when I read Mrs. Dalloway and Flush in my English classes, I was no where near as impressed. Therefore, I thought I owed it to the great writer to give her fiction one more chance...and now I've decided that I'll be sticking only to her non-fiction in the future.
This book set me WAY back in my reading goals for the year. It was a slog. After reading the blurb on the back and being significantly intrigued, I could hardly believe I was on the edge of sleep after twenty pages EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I picked it up. In in 442, practically nothing happens. And that would be okay if there was fascinating inner-life of the characters to entertain me. But there were two major road blocks to that.
1) The characters were entirely inane and ridiculous (and not in a good way). I couldn't understand or relate to them for the life of me. Katherine, the "heroine" of the novel, who is chased after by two men, could not be a more dull and unidentifiable character. She has no interesting traits or intelligent thoughts. I couldn't figure out why they loved her. Neither do the two men chasing her boast much in the way of any positive characteristics. The only character in the whole novel that I was interested in reading about was Mary, who was treated unfairly and glossed over for the most part.
2) This book had very strange emotionality. It was as if all the characters were bipolar. Cold fishes one moment, hormonal teenagers the next. In a single paragraph, they would go from hating someone to loving someone, to finding something of disgust in another, to admiring them. For the life of me, I couldn't understand it. It felt really stilted, as if a robot was trying to write human emotion. In this way, it reminded me a lot of Sons and Lovers by DH Lawerence, and that is a comparison that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
The only reason this book at all gets two stars is because Woolf's writing is undoubtably beautiful in it's construction. I'm sorry that she ever felt the need to prove herself as a writer by composing a domestic novel because it really downgrades her in my opinion. Seriously don't read; it is terribly boring.
This book set me WAY back in my reading goals for the year. It was a slog. After reading the blurb on the back and being significantly intrigued, I could hardly believe I was on the edge of sleep after twenty pages EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I picked it up. In in 442, practically nothing happens. And that would be okay if there was fascinating inner-life of the characters to entertain me. But there were two major road blocks to that.
1) The characters were entirely inane and ridiculous (and not in a good way). I couldn't understand or relate to them for the life of me. Katherine, the "heroine" of the novel, who is chased after by two men, could not be a more dull and unidentifiable character. She has no interesting traits or intelligent thoughts. I couldn't figure out why they loved her. Neither do the two men chasing her boast much in the way of any positive characteristics. The only character in the whole novel that I was interested in reading about was Mary, who was treated unfairly and glossed over for the most part.
2) This book had very strange emotionality. It was as if all the characters were bipolar. Cold fishes one moment, hormonal teenagers the next. In a single paragraph, they would go from hating someone to loving someone, to finding something of disgust in another, to admiring them. For the life of me, I couldn't understand it. It felt really stilted, as if a robot was trying to write human emotion. In this way, it reminded me a lot of Sons and Lovers by DH Lawerence, and that is a comparison that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
The only reason this book at all gets two stars is because Woolf's writing is undoubtably beautiful in it's construction. I'm sorry that she ever felt the need to prove herself as a writer by composing a domestic novel because it really downgrades her in my opinion. Seriously don't read; it is terribly boring.
allisontitus's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0