Jacob's Room

JACOB'S ROOM, a classic modernist text, is more about language and the art of fiction than it is actually a story, which means the narrator has to be as alive to the pleasure of the exact right word as a thriller narrator is to the power of a car bomb. Juliet Stevenson is a perfect actor for the challenge. Her voice is lovely, her diction clean and precise, and she is so sensitive to nuance, to the rhythm of Woolf's sentences, that she communicates her own excitement at Woolf's achievement in a way that delights and even instructs. There is much beauty here, owing equally to Woolf's art and Stevenson's, and the ending is indelibly moving. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Jacob is so hard to manage. Ever since his father, Seabrook Flanders, passed away, he has been a somewhat aimless boy. As Jacob grows, we watch his aimless spirit wander like a butterfly from flower to flower, sipping nectar, but never lighting for long in one spot. Nadia May reads Virginia Woolf's stream of consciousness--her cataloging of voices and images--with such force and authority that gradually in the poetry of these images, a character, albeit somewhat lost and stillborn, breaks through into a hollow world, exactly as Woolf intended. It is the narrator's assurance, as it was the writer's belief before her, that this stream of consciousness cataloging would produce both world and character, and so it does. P.E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

May 1, 2015

Woolf's (Mrs. Dalloway) brilliant novel is a classic of modernism, that literary style that developed after World War I in opposition to classic novels that required a hero or heroine, major and minor characters, and an organized plotline. Like another, better-known modernist work, James Joyce's Ulysses, which was published around the same time, Jacob's Room is a disjointed ramble though various individuals' thoughts and actions. Through his or her described thoughts, each person who interacts with Jacob provides a significant glimpse of his or her own and Jacob's existence. However, these thoughts are frequently splintered and often not about Jacob at all. Juliet Stevenson gives a highly competent reading of a difficult-to-follow text. Even so, many listeners may find that an exceptional effort of concentration is required to appreciate this or any other modernist text in audio format. VERDICT Recommended for individuals interested in Bloomsbury writers, modernist literature, or 20th-century feminist fiction.--I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Ames, IA

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