No plainer manifestation of the modernist trend in contemporary English fiction may be found than in Virginia Woolfs Jacobs RoomThe New York TimesI have seldom read a cleverer book...it is exquisitely written but the characters do not vitally survive in the mind because the author has been obsessed by details of originality and cleverness.Arnold BennettVirginia Woolfs third novel Jacobs Room 1922 is a penetrating look at one mans life from childhood until his untimely death in the first World War. On the surface this could be considered an antiwar novel yet it is a wildly inventive experimental work that dispels traditional forms of narration. The nebulous central character Jacob Flanders is strangely is absent from the novel yet the spaces he traversed are not. In telling the story of Jacob through the perspective of the characters he encountered through his short life Woolf has created an exceptional contemplation of memory time and identity. Subverting the bildungsroman genre Jacobs Room recounts a short and unsettled life through related incidents fleeting impression and delirious streamofconscience passages. Through an almost cinematic lens glimpses of Jacobs early life are recollected through his mother the idyllic time spent with her children and her uneasy experiences living a widowers life. Through other voices Jacob arrives at Cambridge where he is able to socially integrate despite his humble upbringings. After graduating he leaves for London where he interacts with a wide range of individuals both impoverished and from the wealthy class yet he never fully connects to a meaningful human relationship. Jacob questioning whether he is a failure decides to leave London and travels to Greece. Fortunes abroad turn precarious and he returns to London only to be sent off to the war where he is killed in action. As E.M. Forester remarked at the publication of Jacobs Room A new type of fiction has swum into view. Woolf has created a transformative reading experienc