As luck would have it I managed to finish today. I know others are still working hard to get through so I will leave my thoughts on it until a later date. Just to say that if I was giving it marks out of 10 (which is perhaps not the best way to grade literature!) I would give it five; good effort, but must try connecting to the wider world next time.

Not doing well with this. I'm just about to start Chapter XI and the donkey jaunt has just got under way. I.m struggling.

Well we shall need your comments and reasons when the lesson starts on Friday...struggling is not the same as giving up - let alone as never starting

Struggling a little too as only on Chapter X; some due to the book and the rest lack of time. I will (definitely) finish it by Friday and really look forward to comments from others and the lesson too of course Susan.

I want to write down my impressions of TVO and Virginia Woolf before I read the views of other readers; before I read any more of Virginia Woolf's works; before I read more about her life. And I definitely want to do that.

I found TVO enjoyable, interesting, amusing and, most of all, stimulating. The various characters were all addressing the problem of what it means to be human and how strange that is and how strange other people are - like Mr Hewitt I am struggling to express what I mean.

I was struck by Virginia Woolf's mastery of her craft - the apparent ease with which she describes the interior landscapes of her characters; her equally powerful and varied descriptions of and allusions to the exterior world, the physical landscape, the weather, light and darkness; her enjoyment of other people comes through her close observations of their foibles and conversation - some of this is so funny. I feel that she knew exactly where she was going with the characters. It may have been her first novel but it must have been the culmination of years of writing. She reminds me of a virtuoso musician playing a very simple piece of music with no attempt to dazzle the listener with unnecessary flourishes.

Was she a contemporary of Aldous Huxley? I can remember devouring his books when I was at school and being impressed with his mixture of cynical wit, social observation, displays of erudition. Did he not write about the same social class and same artistic and academic people? Bu his writing seems to me to be more brittle and less serious than TVO.

Was there a lot of Virginia in Rachel? And what about Helen Ambrose? Was St John Hirst based on Lytton Strachey.

But most of all I was struck by her emphasis on kindliness and her sympathetic understanding of people who were not immediately likeable. There is, of course, an unconscious snobbery in her brief references to the 'lower orders', to the natives, to typists and to clerks which could be alienating to someone like me who came from a working class background.

My grandmother was also born in 1882 but in different circumstances. She left school at 12 and worked in service in one of the big houses in Cheltenham. I remember her as a strong, intelligent but uneducated woman who had spent her whole life working extremely hard in order to keep her head above water. No idle time in which to contemplate philosophy or the strangeness of life. No time to write. Imagine that the two babies had been switched at birth. Would Virginia have become a writer? Would my grandmother have written something like The Voyage Out?

Enough of these unstructured meanderings! Suffice it to say that I am so grateful to have been encouraged to read Virginia Woolf. I can see that she has the potential to occupy my thoughts for the near future. I wonder what would have happened if Susan had not discovered Virginia Woolf at such a young age?

Now I can sit back and read what everyone else has to say!

Susan and all, I'm so keen to jump in with all of you, even if I am late. I'm a devotee of Woolf and have read TVO two or three times, but I fear it's too late to read it this time around. Will try to read the next book on your schedule as soon as I track this back to see which that actually is. Well done for initiating this, Susan!

I've just finished it, 6pm Friday, sorry, dashing into the class room all dishevelled and late, so pleased the lesson hasn't started yet, thought I'd be in detention.

Replying to myself I must add I was NOT expecting that ending at all and am still recovering.