Between the Acts

1941 • 292 pages

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Average rating3.7

"Virginia Woolf's extraordinary last novel, Between the Acts, was published in July 1941. In the weeks before she died in March that year, Woolf wrote that she planned to continue revising the book and that it was not ready for publication. Her husband prepared the work for publication after her death, and his revisions have become part of the text now widely read by students and scholars. Unlike most previous editions, the Cambridge edition returns to the final version of the novel as Woolf left it, examining the stages of composition and publication. Using the final typescript as a guide, this edition fully collates all variants and thus accounts for all the editorial decisions made by Leonard Woolf for the first published edition. With detailed explanatory notes, a chronology and an informative critical introduction, this volume will allow scholars to develop a fuller understanding of Woolf's last work"--

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Mandy

It's not this book, it's me - probably.

This probably should not have been my entry point to Virginia Woolf's works, considering that this is her last novel. Reading this novella made me feel a little stupid because I had no idea what was going on from start to end. I'm also getting intimidated for my plan to read The Voyage Out by her later this month.

A pageant is being organised at Pointz Hall by its crowd of guests, largely upper-middle class folks. The pageant takes the audience through the history of England, from the Middle Ages up to the Victorian era, which wasn't that far away from when this novel was written and published in 1939.

The writing here was almost absurdist in the way it was so, so messy. It flits around from viewpoint to viewpoint, character to character, and then rests inexplicably on apparently random things and situations. The dialogue doesn't seem to make sense, or are always being cut off by other people. Nobody seems to talk straight to the point.

But in a way, I can't help feeling - is it just me? Am I just not approaching this in the right angle to appreciate what this novella is trying to say? I literally had to go search this book up on Sparknotes after I was done to get some help deciphering it. Even though it was a super short and quick read, it felt so dense, like it was a long enigmatic cipher that I couldn't crack.