Between the Acts

It is a
variable early summer’s day, and there is an unusual bustle in the grounds of
Pointz Hall, a country house in a remote village in the very heart of
England. The local community is all astir, intent on putting the finishing
touches to preparations for the annual pageant, which is to be performed
there that evening. Among the medley of attendants are Mr Oliver, the owner
of the house, the flirtatious Mrs Manresa and her friend William Dodge, who
is rumoured to be homosexual, the troubled married couple Giles and Isa, as
well as the eccentric spinster Miss La Trobe, the author of the pageant - an
ambitious journey through England’s past and literature.

Highly symbolic, and dealing with many of the themes that were most dear to
Virginia Woolf, such as the condition of the individual in the current of
history, sexual ambiguity and the tension between life and art, Between the
Acts was the author’s final novel, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the
direction her fiction might have taken.