Prologue Summary

In 1941, shortly after the start of the Second World War, Virginia Woolf walks out of her home, leaving behind two suicide notes, and heads towards the river. On her way, she passes a farm worker digging a ditch, and she thinks how successful he is, how fortunate, to be doing his job and doing it well on such a beautiful day. Virginia tells herself she is a failure as a writer. The voices in her head are back, and she fears the black headaches are not far behind. She notices the bombers in the sky, a sign of war, or a sign of madness, depending on if they're real or not - she can't tell.

At the river, she searches for a heavy stone, notices a lone fisherman upstream. He doesn't notice her, however, as she places the stone in the pocket of...