The Years (Annotated)

One of Virginia Woolf's most ambitious and beloved novels, The years offers a glimpse into the lives of one upper-class English family during the turn of the century. The story begins on a day in 1880 in the household of Colonel Abel Pargiter, whose wife lies ill, gradually slipping into death in front of their seven anxious children. Over the years that follow, deaths, births, marriages, and war shape each family member's life, but it is through commonplace moments that the essence of each character is revealed. When the Pargiters, young and old, come together at a 1930s party that ends the novel, they talk, dream, and contemplate the patterns of the past and present--while the reader is left to imagine the future still to come. -- Back cover.