"The waves", written by Virginia Woolf and published in 1931, traces the lives and friendships of six childhood friends from their childhood to their old age. It tells of the friends' true feelings, which are often different from the ones they portray to each other, when one of them, Bernard, dies. It is a difficult novel, and many literary critics think it is her best novel.

In this extract the main character is Susan, and the feelings are told are hers. She is in the garden of the house where she has lived the most of her life, walking and cutting flowers with her son and her daughter, and while she is doing so, she remembers her past life and how she feels. She starts to remember her childhood, adolescence and maturity, and by these memories are passing, she feels worse and worse, because she is conscious of the...