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I can never avoid the picture in my mind of Virginia Woolf putting on her overcoat, filling its pockets with stones, and walking into a river; and that picture always colors my view of her books.
These are her early novels, and my favorite is "Jacob's room" which revolves, almost confusingly, around the life story of the main character, Jacob Flanders; the book takes the exclusive form of presenting the impressions of the other characters to describe Jacob, although there are occasions when Jacob's perspective rules. I don't know if this book has a plot, but Jacob does seem to serve as its center, even if sort of invisibly. The world is empty and real life seems absent, because the description(s) of Jacob are so ambiguous and almost totally functions of the remembrances and feelings of the narrator and Jacob's fellow characters. You end up wondering if Jacob is really real.
I'm not sure how to say how brilliant all three of the books in this collection are or why. They just are.
