What do you think?
Rate this book
Moments of Being: Second Edition [MOMENTS OF BEING 2/E]
Moments of Being( Second Edition) <> Paperback <> VirginiaWoolf <> MarinerBooks
- GenresFeminism
Paperback
Published August 31, 1985
1 person is currently reading
16 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 7, 2025
Excellent story. Strong, intense, serious writing. One of her best. Highly recommended!
Read
May 24, 2024read this right after reading BETWEEN THE ACTS, her last novel, and it took a minute to adjust to the transition ...
here are groupings of five memoirs spanning three general time periods: the first, written as a still unpublished young woman, mainly reflecting on childhood and family; the second, at mid career (shortly after the publication of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE) and the third (in 1940, one year before her death) as WWII was tearing away at great britain.
it's been a long time since i read the letters and journals, and despite the thirty plus years since i engaged with those works (and my memory is strained), i feel this reads quite differently. it's a lot like listening to woolf meditate ... and there's a lot on her plate - the loss of a sister, a mother, a father and a brother - in terms of family life. there are the every day moments of being: wondering, assessing, reflecting, projecting into the future. and in all, we see a familiar mind at work that had an unparalleled to burrow down into a thing and see if from every perspective.
the writing is almost proustian - long sentences populating long paragraphs. in the mid section (A SKETCH OF THE PAST), she takes breaks from writing her biography of roger fry and fills pages of memoir. you get the impression that the woman never stopped writing. it was a daily activity, like breathing, walking ... and the words seem to flow effortlessly, although if you read her letters and notebooks, you discover this was not the case. she struggled with many things, as we learn here, but she never failed the endeavor of recording it all.
it's hard to imagine a woman with such endurance, such tenacity, would fill her pockets with stones and abandon hope as she walked into a river in 1941 never to emerge from it alive. we know that childhood sexual abuse lay underneath it all, and those scars produced headaches and depression that struck hard on a few occasions. she fought it with her devotion to writing, and we have the fruit of her labor. we gratefully receive the gifts she could not give herself.
here are groupings of five memoirs spanning three general time periods: the first, written as a still unpublished young woman, mainly reflecting on childhood and family; the second, at mid career (shortly after the publication of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE) and the third (in 1940, one year before her death) as WWII was tearing away at great britain.
it's been a long time since i read the letters and journals, and despite the thirty plus years since i engaged with those works (and my memory is strained), i feel this reads quite differently. it's a lot like listening to woolf meditate ... and there's a lot on her plate - the loss of a sister, a mother, a father and a brother - in terms of family life. there are the every day moments of being: wondering, assessing, reflecting, projecting into the future. and in all, we see a familiar mind at work that had an unparalleled to burrow down into a thing and see if from every perspective.
the writing is almost proustian - long sentences populating long paragraphs. in the mid section (A SKETCH OF THE PAST), she takes breaks from writing her biography of roger fry and fills pages of memoir. you get the impression that the woman never stopped writing. it was a daily activity, like breathing, walking ... and the words seem to flow effortlessly, although if you read her letters and notebooks, you discover this was not the case. she struggled with many things, as we learn here, but she never failed the endeavor of recording it all.
it's hard to imagine a woman with such endurance, such tenacity, would fill her pockets with stones and abandon hope as she walked into a river in 1941 never to emerge from it alive. we know that childhood sexual abuse lay underneath it all, and those scars produced headaches and depression that struck hard on a few occasions. she fought it with her devotion to writing, and we have the fruit of her labor. we gratefully receive the gifts she could not give herself.
Read
September 1, 2025aight for what it is. will help to the lighthouse make more sense i guess
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews