Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf

I have a special reading speed for Virginia Woolf, which is quite challenging for me. I tend to read much too fast and dash headlong through books, but with Woolf, I have to continually keep slowing myself down, so that I can enjoy every detail and try to understand her style. I thought that I had read Jacob's Room before, but to my surprise, it turned out that I haven't. I found it quite a challenging read (more challenging than Woolf's other experimental novels), because it isn't as coherent as To the Lighthouse or The Waves (to which it is very similar). It sometimes picks up in the middle of conversations, and it's impossible to understand what the characters are talking about, or even what the relations between them are, which leaves me feeling very frustrated with myself, because I feel like I've missed something. The writing and patterns of imagery are, as usual, exquisite, and were definitely what I liked best. I was also quite confused about the narrative voice, because it occasionally speaks in the first person, but whose voice it is (Woolf's own, some fictional narrator's, someone in the story) I couldn't tell. The narrator seems to be the same throughout the book, yet also ventriloquises the thoughts of various characters. I loved the tiny glimpses of highly complex relationships that Woolf provides, illuminating slivers that capture something essential about characters and relationships. The way Woolf moves between characters of various social positions and occupations reminded me of Mrs. Dalloway, but it is less coherent and focussed here. Obviously, I loved this book because it's Virginia Woolf (I feel like this is just taken for granted at this point), but I also found it very challenging and confusing and it made me feel both very happy and very stupid.