Page:Night and Day (1919).pdf/546

 “ the book is written with genius. Genius is very hard to define, and a word used much too light-heartedly by reviewers. But every one when he has finished reading a book which possesses it, is conscious of that particular sensation as though a window had been opened in the mind. To try to estimate the comparative sizes of the windows opened by Dostoevsky, say, and Mrs. Woolf is unnecessary. The important and splendid thing is that here is a new writer capable of opening windows. Mrs. Woolf has given us with no alloy of what she ought to feel or what other people have felt the full reaction to the world of her rare mind, mocking, fantastic, piercing and mystical. No reader will ever forget her description of a girl’s bewildered falling into the depths of love, or of the unbelievable approach of death. Yet it is likely enough that to many people Mrs. Woolf’s abounding wit will appeal more than any of her other qualities .—Country Life.

“From the first few pages of this book we felt that we had come across a writer of rare and original power, and we are delighted to find that that view is held by all the critics who have devoted space to the review of this book. The plot matters little but the thing that does matter is the view of life there given, and the art with which that view is presented  which can only be described as wonderful. The whole book carries the reader along with an abandon that cannot be resisted. For all who care for the novel as a form of expression of the highest importance this book will come as a revelation.”—Birmingham News.

“The outstanding feature of this novel is the remarkable manner in which the characters are made to exhibit and develop themselves in dialogue. We have read many a novel with as much conversation in it, but we have not often read a novel, and especially a first novel, if such this be, with so much conversation which is at once so full of character, and sustained on so high a level. The end is sad in the sense that death intervenes, but somehow it seems a proper finish to a book of very remarkable power. The author has a wonderful grip of human nature, and her observation is of exceptional keenness, as a hundred points bring out.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“A writer with such perceptions should be capable of great things. If this is a first novel, as we believe it to be, it is a very remarkable one; there is not merely promise but accomplishment.”—Manchester Guardian.

“One might declare the season blank of fresh talent unless one chanced on ‘The Voyage Out.’ It is an unusual book, and a particularly unusual book from a woman. This is tragedy after the manner of the great masters, and a wonderful ending to a capably written book.”—Standard.

“‘The Voyage Out’ provides a welcome emotion—surprise. It is a really unusual book, and better still an unusually good book. Its strangeness is a little disconcerting at first, but very soon it catches hold and is amazingly interesting. The secret of its unlikeness to the general run of novels is in this: the author is not inventing a number of people, labelling them but presenting them as real men and women, complex and various. Thus it follows that watching the lives of these men and women is as deeply interesting and more possible than the study of acquaintances.”—Field.

“It is difficult to define the exact quality which gives such a sense of reality to Mrs. Woolf’s story. It has practically no plot, there is no character for whom we feel any intimate affection, and the humour is rather of that frankly coarse nature which appeals to undergraduates. And yet from the first page to the last the book is extraordinarily vital.”—Queen.