From his childhood on the wild, windswept shores of Cornwall and his college days at Cambridge to his life as a lawyer in London and a fateful journey to the Mediterranean, Jacob Flanders-s story is told by the women in his life, whether through his mother-s correspondence, the conversations of a friend or the thoughts and remembrances of those who love him. An extraordinary departure from traditional forms of the novel, Jacob-s Room is both an elegiac and experimental tale told in pieces and fragments, and one of Virginia Woolf -s most poignant stories. -Jacob, of whom people speak, of whom they think- is never shown. And yet that denial of presence on the part of the author makes of him one of the most living presences in world literature.- - MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM