BETWEEN THE ACTS

Here, in her last book, is Virginia Woolf at her most tenuous, elusive, unreal. The various terms which have been applied to her art seem all to apply -- ""evocative"", ""fragile"", ""unsubstantial"", ""eclectic"". The scene and the compass of this book is a pageant in a small English village, alternating with the actors of the local pageant are the figures in a private pageant of spectators:- Giles, stockbroker, at odds with his wife, Mrs. Manress, hearty, blowsy woman of forty who assumes the role of child of nature; Giles' father, withered, dry, his sister a vague old lady, etc. There is no action, save in the pageant which is reproduced now in poetry, now in prose. The quality of the book lies in its nuance, its shadows, its reflections, its aestheticism. There is an ethereal, haunting, beauty, strangely distant. Sharply limited market.