The Years (Audiobook)

The most popular of Woolf's novels during her lifetime, "The Years" is at once the story of three generations of a family, the pargiters, and a savage indictment of British society at the turn of the century. A work of fluid and dazzling lucidity, the novel does not follow a simple line of development but is varied and constantly changing, emphasizing its narrative discontinuity. As the characters follow their daily rituals they struggle to understand the significance of their own lives and experiences in relation to each other and to the historical events going on around them. There is often failure yet there is also hope in the recognition that the future can be different from the past.
Finty Williams's (narrator) bright, lively voice immediately engages listeners in Virginia Woolf's 1937 novel. Beginning in 1880, the story chronicles fifty years in the life of the Pargiter family yet doesn't actually sustain a narrative line. It is more a series of lively vignettes, significant events, memories, and sensations. Of course, Woolf's feminism and social consciousness are ever present, but even more prevalent in this work is her awareness of the remorseless passage of time. While the novel is fascinating as much for its omissions as for its artful prose and character sketches, it is Finty Williams's performance, her intensity and believable characterizations, that will keep listeners glued to their headsets.