Ralph plays the stock market with the families savings early on then that never mentions it again. There are a few dead ends in the book too. Woolf not being working class was apparently out of touch with it in her writmg. Aside from Katherine, most characters have jobs that start at 10:00 and pay reasonably well. Something that may etch the reader also is how good it is to be middle class. ( )Īlthough an early work by Woolf there is a development of her poetic style of writing in parts.

The story could have been told in fewer words, but the plot and characters kept me happily taking in the words so I could find out how they solved their problems and how some of them came together at the end. On one level, they are upper class twits nattering on about their own problems, but on the other hand, they are taking on modern life during a period of great change and trying to find their own way in it. It follows four characters, two young men and two young women from similar layers of the upper-middle classes in London, each confused about what they want from their life and each entangled in the lives, loves, and aspirations of the other three. This is Woolf's second novel, predating the 1920s and before her move into modernism, but still is a Woolf novel and still worth reading. ( )Ĭomplex in its multiple scenes and points of view, frustrating when its characters confusingly, constantly change their minds and aspirations without obvious reason, Night and Day is still a great read. With only the top three being essential reading imo. Very boring at times as we follow the cast of bumbling middle/upper-middle class amorists from Chelsea to Bloomsbury to Highgate and back on foot and in innumerable cabs.Īnyway that's a wrap for Woolf's novels and my ranking is: I think this is actually her longest novel, yet it has the least to say. It's about a pair of overlapping love triangles - Katherine and Mary love Ralph, William and Ralph love Katherine - and it amounts to a novella's worth of action at most. I suppose this is the accurate, too, and if you pay attention you can see her probing the mental processes underlying her characters' actions and words, but the plot here doesn't come close to justifying the exhausting word count. I've seen this described as a comedy of manners without the comedy, which is accurate, and also as Woolf demonstrating that she can write a 'conventional' novel - playing tennis with a net - before embarking on her groundbreaking Modernist journey.

Night and day by virginia woolf