I used to love the work of woolf but sadly recently i have begun to find her quite irritating. This is without doubt her best book, it is a perfect little prism-a delicacy. But sometimes it seems to me that her language has absolutely no poetic density, or she intertextualises in a rather obvious fashion which doesn't add to her style. This is a book that one can fall in love with for a while, but it becomes apparent eventually that it is insubstantial- that is compared with other modernists of the period. However, it would be a good introduction to proust to read this- someone vastly superior to woolf who also had something she lacks- a sense of humour.

This is the first virginia woolf book that I have had the fortune to read, and I must comment that I was blown away by it's fantastically original style. It reads to me as a beautiful at times haunting long poem, that never ceases to enage the reader. The story is based around 7 individuals and documents their lives from children to adults. The book can be a little confusing at times due to the nature of it's content, but the sheer beauty of the words carries it through it's weaker moments. So lovely I might even read it again.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? <br>She was an author I had put off reading for some time now, for reasons I'm not sure I fully understand, but having finally got around to reading her once, I'm looking forward to a second chance. <br>For the first time in a long time, I have found myself shocked by a book. By the style as well as the substance. I remember an old friend describing the first time he heard 'Sunshine of your love' by Cream in the sixties and how he thought 'I didn't know you could do that, make that sound with a guitar'. Reading this book shocked me out of the complacency of what a novel could be or achieve. <br>In a stream of consciousness narrative, echoing the tide's waxing and waning over a single day, the novel follows the life of six friends from childhood to old age. It's a novel of feeling and sound, emotive more than cognitive. Poignant, halcyonic, melancholic - like it's author. A wonderful poetic gift that needs to be felt. A book to return to again and again.