The Voyage Out (Tantor Audio & Book Classics)

Rachel Vinrace, Virginia Woolf's first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at twenty-four, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. But theirs is ultimately a tale of doomed love, set against a chorus of other stories and other points of view, as the narrative shifts focus between its central and peripheral characters. Among them is the young, sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, with whom Rachel falls in love. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen, who wishes to teach Rachel "how to live." Arriving in Santa Marina, a village on the South American coast, Rachel and Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates. Less formally experimental than her later novels, The Voyage Out nonetheless clearly lays bare the poetic style and innovative technique-with its multiple figures of consciousness, its detailed portraits of characters' inner lives, and its constant shifting between the quotidian and the profound-

"Textually, these editions of Mrs Dalloway and The Voyage Out are the most immaculate available." David Bradshaw, Worcester College

Cphe said The Voyage Out. This is the third novel I've read by Virginia Woolf and whilst I found it to be the most "readable" of the novels that I've read to date I couldn't in all honesty say that it was an easy read. I kept waiting for something to happen, some momentous event to push the story along. It wasn't until I gained some patien. "When I complained to my daughters that I really did not like the ending" according to C. H. Gilliland. If you are willing to take your time and read this book as though you were in a deck chair on a leisurely cruise yourself, the rhythms will be congenial. Woolf's sharply observed observations along the way well repay a reader's time beyond the interest of the narrative and characters.When I complained to my daught. "One Star" according to aritinka. That is a difficult reading that takes absolute concentration that I lost shortly after the beginning.