"No plainer manifestation of the modernist trend in contemporary
English fiction may be found than in Virginia Woolf's Jacob's
Room"-The New York Times "I have seldom read a cleverer book...it
is exquisitely written, but the characters do not vitally survive
in the mind because the author has been obsessed by details of
originality and cleverness."-Arnold Bennett Virginia Woolf's third
novel, Jacob's Room (1922), is a penetrating look at one man's life
from childhood until his untimely death in the first World War. On
the surface, this could be considered an anti-war novel, yet it is
a wildly inventive experimental work that dispels traditional forms
of narration. The nebulous central character, Jacob Flanders, is
strangely is absent from the novel, yet the spaces he traversed are
not. In telling the story of Jacob through the perspective of the
characters he encountered through his short life, Woolf has created
an exceptional contemplation of memory, time, and identity.
Subverting the bildungsroman genre, Jacob's Room recounts a short
and unsettled life through related incidents, fleeting impression,
and delirious stream-of-conscience passages. Through an almost
cinematic lens, glimpses of Jacob's early life are recollected
through his mother; the idyllic time spent with her children and
her uneasy experiences living a widower's life. Through other
voices, Jacob arrives at Cambridge, where he is able to socially
integrate despite his humble upbringings. After graduating, he
leaves for London, where he interacts with a wide range of
individuals, both impoverished and from the wealthy class; yet he
never fully connects to a meaningful human relationship. Jacob,
questioning whether he is a failure, decides to leave London and
travels to Greece. Fortunes abroad turn precarious, and he returns
to London only to be sent off to the war, where he is killed in
action. As E.M. Forester remarked at the publication of Jacob's
Room, "A new type of fiction has swum into view." Woolf has created
a transformative reading experience conveying the emptiness of one
individual's life by leaving out the traditional elements of plot
and character, yet she manages to question the ways we fail to see
each other as we actually are. With an eye-catching new cover, and
professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Jacob's Room is
both modern and readable.
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