Two summers ago I began the project of reading the Woolf corpus in chronological order as published in her lifetime (excluding periodical publication), and I slowed down halfway through largely I think because I am full of trepidation about the approach to the thirties but mainly, let us be honest with ourselves, the approach to The Waves which I first read at I think about nineteen and then again in the second-worst summer of grad school mental illness, and I remember then, the second summer, asking myself if I would remember that as the summer of The Waves and I do, and I do not know what it will be like to go through it again.

Anyway, constitutional Rhodaishness aside (and the uncomfortable resonance of Bernard and his phrases), it's Susan at the start, Susan and her little petal-boats, that absolutely fucking slays me.