There are some absolutely beautiful passages in this; but I'm not sure that it all holds together. The character of Jacob is very distant from the reader, and we seem to be reading about his life as a slender excuse for the crystalline descriptions and meditations upon life that make up the bulk of the book, rather than for any compelling narrative or development of character related to Jacob himself.

This is, however, my first Woolf aside from A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas; perhaps that is simply her style. I'll find out, since I am taking a class on her.