One of the best examples of Woolf's modernist innovation, the story starts in Jacob's childhood and follows him through college at Cambridge, and then into adulthood. The narrative is told mainly through the perspectives of the women in Jacob's life, including the repressed Clara Durrant and the uninhibited young art student Florinda, with whom he has an affair. His time in London forms a large part of the story, though towards the end of the novel he travels to Italy, then Greece.