Customer Reviews

A haunted house and other short stories

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A friend tried to explain what Virginia Wolfe is all about ("She ties it all together in the end.") by letting me read the first short story in this book. What a lovely, lovely story it is! I cannot say more without giving it away, but I will only tell you that I re-read it several times to grab all of its nuances because she makes every word count. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Calling this collection "short stories" can be slightly misleading. I understand why a lot of people hate Woolf's writing, I really do get it. Reading Woolf reminds me of the first time I tasted beer and wine: I took a sip and then politely declined any further tastings for a while. After a while, I decided I was missing something, so I gave them both another try. After the 5th or maybe 500th sip, I realized I was beginning to enjoy the taste. Such as it was with Woolf. The first time I read her in college, I wanted to drop the class entirely and avoid that particular profession at all costs. Then, a couple of years ago I woke up one morning with this weird craving to read her again. I sat down with "To The Lighthouse" and literary fell in love. Since then, I have not been able to get enough.

Woolf's shorter pieces are more difficult to read than her longer pieces, in my humble opinion. As I mentioned before, coining her shorter work as "stories" is a bit misleading, especially if you are not familiar with her work. Don't get me wrong, there are some more traditional stories in this collection ("The Legacy" is one of my all time favorite short stories and worth the cover price alone); however, there are a lot of pieces that are more impressions and reflections on a single moment than what most people would consider an actual story. These impressionistic pieces are quite short (some less than two pages) but require more time to read than some of the longer ones. That might sound a bit like reading poetry and maybe it is. As your eyes read and reread the same lines, suddenly the bigger picture comes into clearer focus and you realize that Woolf has just transformed you into a flower gazing up out of your flowerbed at passerbyers in the park. Neat, huh? Okay, maybe it's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you are looking for a little challenge and up for a bit of mental exercise, this collection is certainly worth a second glance.