I have to admit that most of the time I was reading this, I was just kind of sighing impatiently and going, "WTF, another POV shift? Get on with it, Virginia." And then the end happened, and all those irritating perspective changes turned out to be a skillfully arranged series of triggers leading, like falling dominoes, to a mostly off-the-page explosion.

And it is righteous!

The novel is really a series of vignettes, connected by several recurring characters. It is one of the strangest character studies in literature, but the technique employed by Woolf--revealing the protagonist through the perceptions of others--does double duty in characterizing both Jacob and his era. If you can follow the domino chain, and Woolf doesn't make it easy, the ending is quietly devastating.

Definitely a book to reread.