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In one word, The Years is the chronicle of the passing life. It tells how life, smoothly guided by seasonal cycles, affected the Pargiters, a big London-based family living in a big mansion, starting 1880' till beginning of 1930'.

Extrapolating to two words, the Pargiters family is showing in miniature the trajectory taken by the human race, which is in its infancy sometime in an uncertain spring of 1880��, and presumably grows to its maturity by 1930��, where we find most of them, collected in a house for a summer party, against the window gathered in a group the old brothers (Edward, Morris, Martin) and sisters (Eleanor, Milly, Rose, Delia):the group in the window, the men in their black-and-white evening dress, the women in their crimsons, golds and silvers, wore a statuesque air for a moment, as if they were carved in stone. Their dresses fell in stiff sculptured folds. Then they moved, they changed their attitudes, they began to talk...

I was assuming at the beginning of the book that such a large family would stir the novel pages with some thrilling and exciting episodes, but contrary to my expectations, the Pargiters, as the caravan crossing the desert, do not offer any excitement in their ways of living their lives, or any sensational plot or intrigue. Moreover, I have experienced a deep impression that although the years pass one by one, till they get to their ‘present��, none of the characters change, slightly or dramatically, despite the fact that change itself forces them to change their lifestyle, from richness to poverty, and vice-versa..

There must be another life ,she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people . She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now , she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves. We’re only just beginning to understand, here and there . She hollowed her hands in her lap, just as Rose had hollowed her round her ears. She held her hands hollowed; she felt that she wanted to enclose the present moment; to make it stay; to fill it fuller and fuller, with the past, the present and the future, until it shone, whole, bright, deep with understanding.

I felt this novel so peaceful and so safe, as if nothing could trigger any extreme irritation in me. Although I didn’t get to know in depth each of the member of the Pargiters, I have found more than enough to feed my satisfaction, through all those little snapshot pictures of people, while they are taking part into very mundane, routine daily life habits and events��

...suddenly she saw the sky between two striped tree trunks extraordinarily blue. She came out on the top. The wind ceased, the country spread wide all round her. Her body seemed to shrink, her eyes to widen. She threw herself on the ground, and looked over the billowing land that went rising and falling, away and away, until somewhere far off it reached the sea. Uncultivated, uninhabited, existing by itself, for itself, without towns or houses it looked from this height. Dark wedges of shadow, bright breadths of light lay side by side. Then, as she watched, light moved and dark moved; light and shadow went travelling over the hills and over the valleys. A deep murmur sang in her ears �� the land itself, singing to itself, a chorus, alone. She lay there listening. She was happy, completely. Time had ceased.

Virginia Woolf is a delicate writer to deal with surely, yet The Years is now a favourite with me :)


(Fikret Kızılok feat. Sibel Sezal �� *song Bu Kalp Seni Unutur mu)