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I loved the first third. I enjoyed the second third. But the final third was hugely disappointing - except for the final two or three pages.

It is carefully, insightfully, and beautifully written, and yet I'm a little exasperated at the endless overwrought indecision and changed decisions about who loves and doesn't love whom. I'm reminded of Lady Bracknell's comment in The Importance of Being Earnest: “I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd.�

'Her words... were set down as gently and cautiously and exactly as the feet of a Persian cat stepping among china ornaments.' p145
Woolf writing about Katherine, but it could just as easily be about her own writing.

A century ago, Woolf use 'chill' in what I thought a newish sense:
'He spoke without much vehemence of agreement or disagreement. He seemed chilled.' p134

I was won over to William Rodney:
'It pleased Rodney thus to give away whatever his friends genuinely admired. His library was constantly being diminished.' p60
I want a friend like that!

Reading this is like walking alongside a bubbling brook on a sunny day: sparking prose catching my eye at every turn. Other phrases are just food for thought:
'There are some books that live<\i>... They are young with us, and they grow old with us.' p13