The Years

The most popular of Woolf's novels during her lifetime, «The Years» is at once the story of three generations of a family, the pargiters, and a savage indictment of British society at the turn of the century. A work of fluid and dazzling lucidity, the novel does not follow a simple line of development but is varied and constantly changing, emphasizing its narrative discontinuity. As the characters follow their daily rituals they struggle to understand the significance of their own lives and experiences in relation to each other and to the historical events going on around them. There is often failure yet there is also hope in the recognition that the future can be different from the past.