Name: Between the Acts
ISBN: 9780156034739

Virginia Woolf

Mark Hussey

Personal dramas simmer in rural England on the eve of World War II as Isa and her husband confront each other following a day of pageantry and emotional tension, in an annotated edition of the author's final novel. Original.

Between the Acts

Isa and her husband must confront each other after a day of pageantry and emotional tension

Rocío de la Hera

As you read it, you're wondering when the bomb is going to explode. You know she wrote it when the germans were bombing England. She was under a gigantic stress, you can feel it if you know her, but she's algo clinging desesperately to poetry and words and beauty in this last book. She tells you about this play that is being performed, but also about the people watching it and about the fields and of all these little secrets that only she, all mighty Virginia, could see. 
You can tell that this book wasn't ready, but neither was she. Maybe everything she needed to say it's here, in this fragmentary way. It's up to us to get it. 
I believe it's beautiful, but if you already read all that she's written, please do wait before you get into this. You'll miss her horribly. It's always heartwarming to know that you still have one more Woolf novel to get into.

Between the Acts is Virginia Woolf's last novel, and in her own opinion it was `more quintessential' than any of her others. Set in the summer of 1939 on the day of the annual village pageant at Pointz Hall, the book weaves together the musings of several disparate characters and their reactions to the imminence of a war which is to change the pattern of history. Before the book was published in the spring of 1941, Virginia Woolf had taken her own life.