Status Updates From Menomatka

The end of this novel isn’t exactly what I expected based on the intro. We are given the POVs of the hotel folk who are pretty far from grieving, the closest we get to catharsis being Hirst’s return from the villa, and even he is looking to merely disengage with the emotional drain of the past fortnight. We are spared the intensity of Helen’s and Terence’s grief.

This section encompasses the entirety of Rachel’s illness. It is not lost on me that Woolf authored a novel where she imagines the death of her semi-autobiographical female protagonist and then examines how all of the characters react to her death. Somewhere in here is an acknowledgment that existence did not begin nor end with Rachel, which is echoed in Terence’s heartbreak once the shock of her passing ends.