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Night and Day
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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Virginia Woolf's 'Night and Day' has been enjoyed around the world for over 90 years. Now you can own this classic novel, which is a tale of contrasts between two friends, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet, set in Edwardian London.
Author
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, short story writer, publisher, critic and member of the Bloomsbury group, as well as being regarded as both a hugely significant modernist and feminist figure. Her most famous works include Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own.
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Reviews for Night and Day
Rating: 3.7173912226086956 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
230 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Underwhelming.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Virginia Woolf's second novel that deals with two female friends Katherine and Mary, one the grand-daughter of a great poet and the other devoted to the burgeoning Woman's Movement. Enjoyable but a bit stolid.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oh Virginia Woolf, there is so much to say but will be left unsaid because that’s how things seem to work in your world. Things left unsaid.
For that seems to be how it is in Night and Day. In this London society where cupid’s arrows seem to have flown haphazardly. For Mary loves Ralph who loves Katherine who doesn’t love William who might love Cassandra and not Katherine (his fiancée).
And signals are crossed or missed entirely. And hands are wrung, sighs are sighed, walks are walked and lots of tea is made.
Things sort themselves out eventually and all seems fine and dandy except that there is an odd number in this equation. And that is poor Mary, who devotes her life to causes and who sort of becomes the reluctant counselor to all these lovelorn folks. Of course she herself is caught up in this love-line (so not a triangle or even a square or a circle because no one seems to love her back….awwww!) so she is the maker of tea and her flat the convenient drop-in place for the lovelorn and the confused. It is hard not to like her (especially her family and their amusing initial shyness with Ralph) and I just wish she were treated better.
As for Katherine, I was quite determined to boo and hiss at her, since I’m on Mary’s side and all that. But Woolf sneaks in these bits about how K has this secret love. An unspeakable atrocity as she is the granddaughter of some famous (now deceased) poet (who has a kind of cult status that has visitors calling at the house to see his writing desk and manuscripts).
"When she was rid of the pretense of paper and pen, phrase-making and biography, she turned her attention in a more legitimate direction, though, strangely enough, she would rather have confessed her wildest dreams of hurricane and prairie than the fact that, upstairs, alone in her room, she rose early in the morning or sat up late at night to…work at mathematics."
Yes, a secret love for mathematics. That makes me want to forgive all her faults – and she has many. But it is hard because of Mary and her fondness for Ralph, who’s in love with Katherine. And Katherine is one who believes that love should be:
“Splendid as the waters that drop with resounding thunder from high ledges of rock, and plunge downwards into the blue depths of night, was the presence of love she dream, drawing into it every drop of the force of life, and dashing them all asunder in the superb catastrophe in which everything was surrendered, and nothing might be reclaimed. The man too, was some magnanimous hero, riding a great horse by the shore of the sea. They rode through forests together, they galloped the rim of the sea."
As for the male characters, I didn’t think much of them. William is written as too silly and pompous a character. And Ralph too angsty.
"At one moment he exulted in the thought that Mary loved him; at the next, it seemed that he was without feeling for her; her love was repulsive to him. Now he felt urged to marry her at once; now to disappear and never see her again."
Night and Day might not be one of Woolf’s more lauded books but it was quite a treat to read. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is about love and marriage - how relationships are affected by social mores and perceived obligations. Woolf also asks the bigger questions: What is love? What constitutes marriage? What is necessary for marital happiness? Is marriage necessary for happiness? What is happiness?These are the questions facing Katherine Hilbery, who has been a willing, but bored, drudge, helping her mother with the task of researching her worthy grandfather, a well-known poet and family icon. These are questions also affecting her friends, William Rodney, Mary Datchett, Cassandra Otway, and Ralph Denham.I have loved every one of Woolf's works that I've read so far, and this one is no exception. Her writing rings as clear as a bell, yet every word, every phrase, every object is imbued with layers of meaning.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Described as Woolf's attempt at a classic British romance, this story of a five-way love triangle in pre-War London is a lot weirder and more Woolfy than it initially seems after you dip down under the surface. Katherine Hilbery is wealthy, beautiful, secretly mathematical, and addicted to loneliness. She is engaged to Willam Rodney, a self-conscious but passionate lover of literature with one of the best introduction scenes in all of noveldom. And, although she isn't aware of it, Ralph Denham, the striving, intense, and awkward young lawyer who has stopped by her parents' house for tea is out of control in love with the idea of her. But maybe not with the actual her. To top things off, Mary Datchet, who works for the suffrage movement and hosts rollicking salons in her flat, realizes that she has fallen in love with her friend, Ralph. Plus Cassandra! There is a lot going on here, but Woolf keeps all the threads moving and gives us a slow-starting but effective meditation on what love is exactly, on family, on class, on literature, and on friendship. And I haven't even gotten to Katherine's mother (one of my favorite characters) and the archival implications of her lifelong project of organizing the papers of her famous literary father and turning them into a definitive biography. Right after she goes to visit Shakespeare's grave. Woolf hasn't hit her stride yet with this one, but she is getting there, and it's a fascinating second novel after the emotional explosion of The Voyage Out.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This early novel from Virginia Woolf is superficially a romantic comedy in the classic "Austen" mode. However, Woolf broaches issues of her time such as the liberation of women and the philosophy of G. E. Moore. Moore, popular with the Bloomsbury crowd, was noted for his 'Principia Ethica' which turned the question of morality from what ought to be done to what is good. With the confusion of sexual revolution and class warfare mixed in with the traditional comedic use of misunderstandings this book, while complicated at times, is a delight. It is a real change of pace from the style that Woolf would turn to in her more mature and famous novels.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Night and Day has been called Virginia Woolf's "most neglected novel," and I know why. It's too long, and too boring. This was a disappointment to me because [Night and Day] has also been called Woolf's novel that is most like Jane Austen (which just says that Woolf is not very much like Jane Austen. Neither is Stephen King, btw). My second disappointment is that the novel is about the Edwardian era--my favourite, so I was expecting great things. The novel covers the lives of a group of young adults living in London around 1908. They are each figuring out their place in the world, and each has his or her own ideas, but none of the six want to emulate their parent's Victorian world. There are two love triangles--the beautiful Katherine, her fiance William, and her cousin Cassandra; and, Katherine, a lawyer named Ralph, and a suffragette named Mary. As boring as this book was, there were some truly lovely passages and a few interesting parts. I'd say if you edit this down from the 489 pages of my edition and make it an 80 page novella, it would be a strong book. Woolf is recorded to have said that with this novel, her second, she aimed at "putting it all in," and that she did. Including two pages about a guy looking at his watch. Too, too much! I started Night and Day on June 12 (2 days less than 5 months), and have read 37 other books while chipping away at this one. It was taking me so long that I wrote a mini-review at the half-way point. This is what I said:"Katherine is the dutiful adult daughter who comes from a family of literary aristocracy. She is expected to make a good marriage, but what she really wants is to study mathematics. In the first chapter, she meets Ralph, a young lawyer from a lower class, and doesn’t like him. Hence we know that they will become love interests. Katherine soon gets engaged to William, a boring poet who reminds me of Cecil from A Room with a View. Obviously not the right love interest. And there is also Mary, who works in a suffragette office in Russell Square. Two-hundred-and-sixty-six pages in, that’s all that’s happened so far. Another two-hundred-and-twenty-three pages to go."Recommended for: Readers who liked overstuffed Victorian-style novels and Virginia Woolf completists only. Why I Read This Now: I'm a Virginia Woolf completist.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Virginia Woolf has no equal, and this early novel is no exception. N&D is an incredible cross between a novel of manners and the modernism that VW was creating. Incredible poetry, Delightful plots and characters, endlessly intelligent, there are few better novels to be read.
Book preview
Night and Day - Virginia Woolf
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