The Years

By: Virginia Woolf

Narrated by: Finty Williams

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

Beautiful but flawed

The reader is terrific and the first two thirds of the novel are magnificent but the gratuitous nastiness of the description of Jews becomes disturbing

Took a long time to adjust to the story style

It can be discouraging in the beginning when there were so many characters with a mix of timelines. But once you get used to it, you will be brought into their world and feel you are right there.

My first Virginia Wolfe

Sure I had heard of her. I had just finished a Tom Hardy novel I really liked and was in the mood to be transported to someone else’s world again. That she does- amazing insight and description. But I did start wishing that the characters would do something. Since then I googled her and am glad I finally got around to hearing her. Will check out Mrs Dalloway but will put her in the category of not back to back ( like Cormac McCarthy I worship him but in measured doses)

Beautifully written but I didn’t realize how difficult this would be…

I’ll admit that I’m late to Woolf’s fiction. I’ve been working through a few pieces of that I circumvented when I was an English Literature student in another lifetime. I fondly recall how important Woolf was to my professors, especially those who considered themselves egalitarian feminists. Within the first hour or so of listening to The Years I thought Woolf was presenting an overly idealistic view of the English upper classes and this only heightened as the book went on. But add to that the unvarnished antisemitism and white supremacist sentiments this is something that I have to step away from. And it’s not just the insidiousness of the white superiority here— that’s disturbing. But it’s a reminder to all those who’ve forgotten that once upon a time white meant only a few peoples. If you were Irish, Welsh, Italian or Jewish you were considered undesirable too. I’m not just disappointed but I’m a bit heartbroken. To have a voice as astute and poetic as Woolf’s be filled with this hateful rhetoric is upsetting. And to those saying she’s just a sign of the times— that’s not an excuse.

Hyper realistic look into the inner lives of human beings

Really beautiful prose, and a story that feels less like a plot and more like snapshots. It all comes together beautifully in the end. An overall tone of quiet solitude, no matter if one is alone, with another, person, a small group or even in a crowd. A feeling of isolation from others that is an inescapable experience part of the human condition.

There is some jarring racism and classism, but that’s to be expected in books from the time period. It should be read as a reminder of how far we’ve come, and how little we haven’t.