catinmylap | The Voyage Out - Virginia Woolf (Reply)

I fnished reading The Voyage Out last night. This was Virginia Woolf's first novel, which took her years to write and went through major revisions. While I liked the story a lot, I also found it quite sad, and it made me think about Virginia Woolf's life, especially her breakdowns, or what little I've read about them, which seemed to occur for the most part after deaths of people she loved. Grief was something she dealt with a lot in this book, at least toward the end, but all through it there were one character or another's fears about loved ones, or feelings of loneliness. This was a book about relationships. There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on how little we know of even those closest to us. So much of who we are is beneath the surface, seldom looked at even by ourselves.

There were a few quibbles I had with the book, but they were minor. It was a rich read overall, so I won't go into those. I'm looking forward to reading more of her writings.