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The Years

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The Years

By: Virginia Woolf
Narrated by: Finty Williams
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About this listen

Written in 1937, The Years was the most popular of Virginia Woolf's novels during her lifetime. It explores a rich variety of themes such as sex, feminism, family life, education, and politics in English society from 1800 to the 1930s, as they affect one large upper-class London family.

The principal theme of this ambitious book is time, threading together three generations of the Pargiter family. The story begins on a day in 1880 in the household of Colonel Abel Pargiter, his dying wife, and their seven children, and it ends in the 1930s with a brilliantly depicted party at which the Pargiters, young and old, pass in review.

Important events - births, deaths, marriages, wars - occur in the wings; it is the commonplace moments that are captured here in a sequence of perfectly drawn scenes. As the Pargiters move from the oppressive confines of the Victorian home of the 1880s to the 1930s, they are weighed down by the pressures of war, capitalism, empire, and the rise of Fascism.

Finalist for the 2007 Audie Award for Classics.

©2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)1965 Leonard Woolf Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Marriage War
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Wolf's writing is wonderful but this story is lacking in plot. Great performance by the narrator. The poetic description of seasons people and places is engaging. But it was a struggle to keep going to the end.

Poetic writing.

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I found this book confusing. it is beautifully articulated and the imagery is sublime. It is perhaps one of the first forms of mindfulness without intending to be. Wolfe invests her creative energy into observing and documenting the world around her, the seasons, the weather and the impact of which form the opening of each chapter. While this is mesmerising to get lost in, I expect it to lead somewhere and form a connection with the characters. For me this was lacking, as was any substance in the story and the character development. They get older, that's all. I am one chapter shy of finishing and I have waited too long for a reason to continue.

Like dropping acid while watching paint dry

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