The F-word discussion

Dorothy Richardson was a stream-of-consciousness modernist writer -- in fact, the term "stream of consciousness" was originally coined to describe her unique prose style.

Her life's work was Pilgrimage, a sequence of thirteen novels telling the life story of a woman named Miriam Henderson.

A few years back, I ran across the Virago Press edition of the first three novels, and I loved the first book, "Pointed Roofs." I thought (and still think) it's one of the best books of that generation of writers, and her prose is just fantastic--the end of "Ulysses" is supposed to have been inspired by her writing. If she had stopped after "Pointed Roofs," she'd still deserve to be a major figure in early modern literature, in my opinion.

Anyway, "Pointed Roofs" is fantastic, the second volume ("Backwater") was good but not quite as good, and I read a few more volumes, but didn't enjoy them quite as much. And then I put them down for a while, and never quite got around to reading past the third or fourth volume.

I figured if I could find someone who has read them anywhere, it's here. So. Has anyone read the whole thing? Does she recapture the brilliance of "Pointed Roofs" and parts of "Backwater" in the later volumes? Any other fans of "Pointed Roofs" out there?

And while I'm at it...if you haven't read "Pointed Roofs," I can at least unambiguously recommend that one. It's hard to find, but you can read the whole thing online for free at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3019/3...