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My God, does this woman know how to write! This book is not what I typically read. It is a bit too wordy and heavy in language; many times I just wanted to read it so I could read a more “fun” novel. But i am so glad I stuck it through. Not because it was a particularly ENJOYABLE book to read but because my mind has been blown at just how incredibly accurately Woolf understands the human experience. These characters seem so foreign in time, place, and experience, in basically all the things, but the emotions and internal experiences they describe are so relatable and it is just incredible to me that someone from nearly 100 years before me whom I feel so very far from knowing can know, at the deepest level, my internal experience, and put it into words i never realized existed! YES!! I wanted to scream!! Yes Rhoda! Yes Bernard (especially)! I KNOW that feeling so intimately it’s scary! That life “plays dirty tricks,” that in one moment we can go from enlightened to shocked into insecurity and fierce shame; that what we think of others they so do not think of themselves; that being with others complicates our understanding of ourself; that we are not ever just one being but so many and that that is the most complicated scary thing because I struggle to know which is real and which is me and when I flip from one to the other without forewarning, the drop is often a cause for emotional pain and shame and insecurity. Woolf has put into words so artfully and accurately the complexities and pains and dualities of the human experience, that no words can really explain just how awed I am by her understanding. One could write a million page book analyzing this work and still not be done finding all the connections, the subtle lessons, the many themes, metaphors, and truths this book gives rise to. Still glad it’s over !! And, still so amazed and awed.