Where to start with Virginia Woolf

British novelist, 1882–1941.

Best Virginia Woolf book to start with: Mrs Dalloway (1925), on 8 of the 16 lists it could have made.

Start with Mrs Dalloway. It follows one June day in London and is short enough to read over a weekend. Woolf writes the way her characters think, which feels odd for the first few pages and natural after that. Don’t worry if you lose track of whose thoughts you’re in; the plot is slight and the pleasure is in the sentences.

After that, read To the Lighthouse, a family on holiday by the sea, told in three parts, with the middle part the strangest. If you’d like Woolf at her most playful, try Orlando, in which the hero lives for centuries and changes sex partway through. It’s the lightest of her best-known books.

Jacob’s Room is an earlier experiment and worth reading once you like the others. Save The Waves for last. It is made of six voices speaking in turn and has very little plot, so come to it when you’re used to how she writes.