Publisher's Synopsis
There is a fearful passage in Virginia Woolf's beautiful and mysterious book 'The Waves' which when I first read it gave me an acute shock of unanticipated reminiscence. This is it: 'Since I am supposed', said Neville, 'to be too delicate to go with them, since I get so easily tired and then am sick, I will use this hour of solitude, this reprieve from conversation, to coast round the purlieus of the house and recover, if I can, by standing on the same stair half-way up the landing, what I felt when I heard about the dead man through the swing-door last night when cook was shoving in and out the dampers. He was found with his throat cut. The apple-tree leaves became fixed in the sky; the moon glared; I was unable to lift my foot up the stair. He was found in the gutter. His jowl was white as a dead codfish. I shall call this stricture, this rigidity "death among the apple- trees" for ever. There were the floating, pale-grey clouds; and the immitigable tree; the implacable tree with its greaved silver bark. The ripple of my life was unavailing. I was unable to pass by. There was an obstacle. "I cannot surmount this unintelligible obstacle," I said. And the others passed on. But we are doomed all of us by the immitigable apple tree.'
