To the Lighthouse

Sep 25, 2012 Stephen M rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: s.penk!

Recommended to Stephen M by: Time to read the rest of Woolf's work

Shelves: everything-everything-everything, obras-maestras, poetry, ocean-of-noise

I’ve never dwelt over a set of 200 bound pages with as much joy and relish as I have with To the Lighthouse. I can say without reservation, that this is some of the most incredible writing I’ve ever come across and I’m absolutely baffled as to how Woolf pulled it off. So much of the prose was redolent of an abstract surrealist film, such were the clarity and preciseness of its images. At a certain point Woolf describes an idea entering a character’s mind as a drop of ink diffusing in a beaker of...more I’ve never dwelt over a set of 200 bound pages with as much joy and relish as I have with To the Lighthouse. I can say without reservation, that this is some of the most incredible writing I’ve ever come across and I’m absolutely baffled as to how Woolf pulled it off. So much of the prose was redolent of an abstract surrealist film, such were the clarity and preciseness of its images. At a certain point Woolf describes an idea entering a character’s mind as a drop of ink diffusing in a beaker of water. I left several exclamation points and expressions of pure joy among the marginalia of my copy. I have never experienced such a strange brew of images and ideas that whirl around mere words of a novel, all of which has incited such excitement in me, as if some beautiful and aching aspect of human experience has been solidified on paper that will never be as perfect as it is here.

This book bounces back and forth between philosophy, psychology and fictionalized story telling in such an interweaving of narrative and personal reflection that it may be difficult to discern who is thinking what and which thoughts are the result of whom. This is especially predominant in the opening section, when Woolf just shoves you into the churning waters of her prose and doesn’t throw you a life raft until 45 pages in. The is intentional however, because the book is preoccupied with consciousness at its most mercurial. If at any time, the prose is lucid and clear, it is sure to take a turn for the chaotic within a few pages. There is so much attention given to each individual’s neuroses and preoccupations that they are often magnified beyond your typical day to day worries. The sights are bright and irritating; the sounds are cacophonous; and the emotional cues between each character, the ones that are often subtle and implicit in everyday interaction, are rendered as if each character holds equal parts pure malice and enthralling love that threatens to burst open at any second. I thought about highly sensitive people; I thought of those with autism that experience overwhelming intensity from their sensual perception. I thought of all of those that are under bombardment from the outer world, tingling in its euphoric highs and devastating lows. For some, it may seem as though Woolf overly dramatizes experience, but what she really does is puts her character through life at its most intense and acute. The lives of the characters are so rich in emotion that dipping into their world, for mere pages at a time, is like taking a giant bump of the pure stuff, getting tweaked on all the unbelievable wonder that is conscious experience. I thought of Jeff Mangum’s infamous lyric, how strange it is to be anything at all.

I was fortunate enough to have already read The Waves—a book quite similar in its themes and images—in a classroom setting with a brilliant professor. It allowed me a way into Lighthouse that I might not have had otherwise. If it wasn’t for this frame of reading, I may have been a little too overwhelmed by the non-stop poetic bombardment. So, I will say that my previous experience with Woolf helped tremendously. I have no doubt that anyone who would pick up this book would be blown away by it, but without certain perquisites, it could be a book to throw across the room out of bewilderment. It can be tough. It can be verbose. But it is undoubtably one of the best books I’ve read this year.

During her time as a writer, Woolf was quite invested in the scientific theories of her day. There are, apparently, a lot of her own personal writing that spoke highly of her research into the area and all of the scientific advances being made at the turn of the century, a time heralded by the legendary Charles Darwin. Woolf’s focus wasn’t necessarily on natural selection—although its influence is present—but on the theories and writings surrounding thermodynamics. Although I’m woefully unqualified to talk about the finer points of thermodynamics, what’s important for reading Woolf, is the idea of the conservation of energy, moreover, the fact that matter is never lost. It is continually recycled and that all of our world is a constant fluctuation of heat and matter, moving in and out of different systems—including that oh so special system called human beings.

Although, ostensibly our experience of the world tells us that we are one solidified unit of matter, always held together in the perfected feeling of selfness and oneness that is our day to day life, the truth couldn’t be any further from that. Woolf seemed particularly haunted by the idea that what seemed to be a solidified conscious experience was actually a continual fluctuation of matter, on a physical level, and the consequential thoughts, worries and sensual bombardment, on the experiential level. These new ideas destabilized previous notions about our awareness of the world as the absolute avenue to truth and the reality of this world. Thus, it is in this tension that the characters of To the Lighthouse find themselves in. They are obsessed with creating still images out of the cacophony of a thermodynamic universe, trying to cling to old notions of a person still being that solidified center of the world. A character will revel in the beauty and wonderment of a single moment, only to have it slip away from them and be washed away in the tumultuous seas of conscious experience. Although our minds create perfected still images out of the constant transformation of matter around, these still images skip away into the past before they can be fully grasped, fully made whole: “With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta’s arm and left the room, it changed, shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past”

But more than any lofty philosophical or scientific conceits, this book is achingly beautiful. Never for a moment does the specifics of the scientific theory engulf the work. Instead it remains above the surface, leaving its impact upon you emotionally. The book is wrought with beautiful feeling and what could possibly make this better than the work of Joyce, for example is that it never leaves one with a cold intellectual shoulder or the folded-arm distance of an extravagant feat of technical writing skill. Woolf goes for the gut.

And even if you are completed uninterested in the finer points of Woolf’s overall conceit, you can still appreciate the beauty of the titular image—the lighthouse. I was particularly moved by all of Woolf’s images of water as a stand in for conscious experience in all its tumultuous churning; and the fact that a lighthouse is the tall solidified object which brings ships lost at sea back to solid ground; and the fact that this lighthouse is what the characters hang all their hopes and desires upon; and the fact that we, the reader, must sail through all that thick prose to get to the promised reward at the end,

The lighthouse, for there it was.(less)

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Mar 26, 2013 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those Wanting an Accessible Start to a Stream of Consciousness Novel

Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by: Stephen M

Shelves: classics, women-voices, friend-recommendations, friend-favorites, modern, modern-library-100, stream-of-consciousness, 20th-century, british, time-100

Are we going to the lighthouse tomorrow? No. Yes. Perhaps. I don’t know. Maybe we should just content ourselves to go to the beach to watch the waves. The waves break. The light falls.

There is an elegiac note to the murmur of the sea. The consciousness of the characters in "To the Lighthouse" have a rhythm that mimics the sea: masculine and feminine; contentment and anxiety; light and dark; soft and hard; life and death; order and chaos.

The waves roll out and return again. We see about us the...more

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Aug 15, 2011 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, ficciones, malick-should-film-it, shouldreread

I think that in certain scenes of To the Lighthouse Woolf’s method — introspective exhaustiveness — disclosure of the vistas within our gestures, the little worlds that flare and die in the time it takes to pass the salt — approaches its own parody. Sometimes reading this was like watching a movie frame by frame. And I found the texture less evenly lyrical than that of Mrs. Dalloway. But cavils aside, it is amazing. Last year I got far enough in Hermione Lee’s biography to know that this novel i...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-classic, novels

It's a problem, dear Virginia
They like stuff that's much more linear,
I know your teeth you will grit
But you have to admit
You may be hot but there's not
a lot of plot that you got
Five pages about rain on a distant steeple
Is five too many for most of the British people
They moan about Mrs Dalloway
In such a very callow way
Instead of your Orlando
They prefer something more blando
They'd rather go to raves
Than have to read The Waves
And no one's read The Years
In years and years and years
Well - i know it'...more

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Sep 26, 2012 s.penkevich rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Those who haven't read it, and to those who should read it again

Recommended to s.penkevich by: Stephen M and Ifer

Shelves: favorites, death, europe

‘…for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge…’

To enter within the pages of Woolf’s 1927 masterpiece, To the Lighthouse, is to dive headlong into a maelstrom of vivid perspectives and flawless prose. Few authors are able to achieve the vast scope of human emotions and frustrations as of this novel, let alone accomplish such a task in the mere 209pgs Woolf offe...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, 2012, in-by-of-england, scottish, virginia-woolf-hogarth-bloomsbury, modern-love

The first time I read this book I was eighteen. It was the summer before college. I remember reading a lot that summer but this is the only book I remember the feeling of reading. It stands out for me as a peak in my life, reading and otherwise, around which water flows, time is lost, and memories don't return when I want them...but that moment when I finished it, that I remember. It's very clear. I remember the room, how the furniture was arranged, the slight yellowness to the light from the la...more The first time I read this book I was eighteen. It was the summer before college. I remember reading a lot that summer but this is the only book I remember the feeling of reading. It stands out for me as a peak in my life, reading and otherwise, around which water flows, time is lost, and memories don't return when I want them...but that moment when I finished it, that I remember. It's very clear. I remember the room, how the furniture was arranged, the slight yellowness to the light from the lampshade. I remember lying on the white carpet and thinking about what was next.

I remember loving the dinner party, Time Passes, and being captivated by Lily Briscoe, the unfairness of being told that women can't paint, women can't write.... I still want the horrid little man who had said that to Lily to meet with an unfortunate event. Not violence, per se, but something embarrassing -- deeply embarrassing -- like a strategic splash from a passing car that looks like he pissed himself on the way to a job interview. Something that would make him feel the way I feel to hear some man sputter about women as a cohesive group, as if we are all guilty for the perceived sins of our sisters; as if because he doesn't like one book by a woman, no book by any woman, ever, is any good; as if because a woman wrote Fifty Shades of Grey, all books by women are bad. Painting us all with the same brush because he doesn't see us as individuals, because we are all (or should be) Mrs. Ramsey. A Platonic form of womanhood. Beautiful. A fountain of support for a brilliant man. A compassionate companion. A kind mother. And those of us who are not those things? Well, women can't paint...

This is the fifth time I've read this book. It whelms me as a read, washing over me in the waves that are among Woolf's favorite metaphors. There is so much water in this book: lapping at my toes on the shore of the beach, over which I glide as I approach the lighthouse; coming down on me as I wake in the morning dashing my hopes; lying in front of me, clear and blue, as I pick up a brush to make a point about women and art -- that this one woman can write a book that doesn't have a wasted word. There is no superfluous description in this book. Not an insignificant word is used as someone walks up a path. The description of the basket in Mrs. Ramsey's hand is describing the state of the world of women. Her knitting as she accomplishes something difficult with her needles is background to her thoughts, the complex thoughts that she can only entertain while she knits for one child and cares for another, while her husband is pacing up and down the veranda, with no other task but to think. Not a single word is wasted here; everything matters, even the kind of tobacco Charles smokes.

Maybe that's why it's so hard to read sometimes, for some people (among whom I count myself the first time and maybe the second time). We're often lazy as readers, as thinkers; we're used to getting a paragraph of description here and there (at least) that just doesn't matter. It's just "evocative" of the period, just mood setting, just a character foible. Not here, here everything is about the meaning of life, somehow, and to be interpreted in multiple ways: is it about childhood? Is it about growing up? Is it about how I relate to the world? How I relate to another individual? Is it about how small I am, a single craft in the water? Or is it about my parents and how I view them, how I resist them, how I can carry a grudge for decades, and how important it is to let it go?

I look at how many of my friends have loved this book (none have given it fewer than four stars) and I look at the reviews and they're all focused on different (and brilliant) things. Reading the reviews, I feel like I understand each of the writers better as a reader, as a reviewer, as a person. I have never had that with another book. It's like Woolf, having exposed so much here, brings out the same honesty from us. It's impossible to remain unmoved and that spills out all over the review page. Like all great art, some of yourself goes into the viewing of it.

As I'm reading it again and thinking about all this and trying not to get too excited about all the new things I keep finding in this great, great book, I think about what I've seen happen on goodreads lately, with yet another one of those angry young men, crying into the cyber-void, "women can't paint, women can't write." Woolf puts it all in perspective again. Now I hear their own bitterness, their need to be reassured of their own greatness, when all they are small beings, and unable to deal with it. They're back to appearing like little yipping dogs, barking at a shadow on the wall. Too unaware to realize their posturing doesn't mean anything to anyone. But this book, this book means something to me. My friends and how they respond to it, that means something. And Woolf's writing of it, that means so much to me. She says to all of us, you see here, women can write, women can paint.(less)

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Jan 15, 2013 Aubrey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: prose-prose-prose, 1000-guardian, 1001-06-12, books-are-the-best-invention, 5-star, reviewed, reality-check, heartbreak, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die

I'm finding it difficult to watch movies these days, or at least to find one that fulfills the requirements I'm looking for. Their cumbersome attempts at developing fully formed characters, believable folks that intersect with one another in realistic ways, patterns that you can readily see happening in your own life that are entertaining nonetheless for all their normality. These attempts painfully clunk out at random, grinding out a plot that you can't help cringing at, so trite and false it i...more I'm finding it difficult to watch movies these days, or at least to find one that fulfills the requirements I'm looking for. Their cumbersome attempts at developing fully formed characters, believable folks that intersect with one another in realistic ways, patterns that you can readily see happening in your own life that are entertaining nonetheless for all their normality. These attempts painfully clunk out at random, grinding out a plot that you can't help cringing at, so trite and false it is, it's a wonder audiences can watch it through without feeling sick to their stomachs. And it's as if the makers themselves realize the pitiful quality of their attempts, and constantly patch it over with humorous tropes and comedic outbreaks. Most of the time, the fix-ups make it even worse.

What a splendid joy, then, this book. What a brilliantly contained piece of work, this story, fully conscious in every aspect of its being. This is what movies ape at, this seamless interplay of thought and observation and emotion between a whole cast of people, each one astounding in their originality. A sentence here, a paragraph there, a whole passage devoted to a single entity, it doesn't matter. There they are, there is that being so different from everyone that surrounds it, warped by all the other original personalities yet still retaining a small kernel of themselves, requiring only a glance to proclaim themselves as completely and utterly unique to the casual observer. And on and on they race through time and place, a story blooming between their interactions that is supremely confident and capable of defending every single detail of its aspect. As natural a side effect as the sun drawing towards it the unfurling of flowers, the moon summoning up to itself the swelling of the tides, and as impossible to find issue with.

You can't just set anything down and expect results such as this, however. There needs to be an astounding amount of skill at composing words, wordplay, descriptive lines running past each other so naturally that they are no longer black inkings on a white page. They are your thoughts. They are your memories. They are your senses bringing up past experiences to flesh out and sing the pages to you, playing upon your heartstrings to a fierce and aching crescendo. They are your hopes, dreams, prayers, inspirations, whatever it is that drives you on and brings you back and bids you to think
It is enough! It is enough!
To live for moments such as this, consisting of a book, a reader, and whole hosts of reaction mingling with recognition and realization. To find what your mind has claimed for itself spread upon a sheet of paper, and discover a kindred spirit in the words laying here. The persistent dissatisfaction you have felt with the effort of existing, the exultation you have experienced within the small slices of living. Whatever balances these to an exquisite point, and tips the scales in the latter's favor, to continue on this dreary trek in hopes of the few and far between minutely shaped moments of utter beauty and clarity of meaning in life.

So, there's your characterization, and prose, and themes and meaning, I suppose. It's beyond me to try my hand at discussing the plot, but the more I see of literature, the less I worry that I may be missing out by passing it by. Besides, I'm not a fan of using these words when I'm thinking on what to say about a book. It helps that I'm a complete amateur when it comes to literature, no classical training in it whatsoever since my last high school stint. What I have is myself, the book, and the chemical reaction between the two.

I think, in regards to this single, wonderful, exquisite piece of literature, it is enough.(less)

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Aug 24, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: seekers

Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by: the summer of women 2012

Shelves: own, summer-of-women-2012, 5-f-ing-stars, brits, female-authors, game-changers, read-in-2012, the-tops, you-should-read-this, my-reviews-that-dont-suck

First my left foot then my right behind the other, breadcrumbs lost under the snow…

There are novels that I read purely as a way to escape reality. They are a release from my incessant mental chatter. They help to pass the time. Other novels will not stand for merely serving as a distraction. They demand to be studied. They demand I go the extra mile and extend my reading well beyond my purview. Sixty pages into this formidable work and I realized this is not just a novel to be read. It does not...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Fionnuala rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

How many prejudices we carry through life, even when we think ourselves to be incapable of bias. I avoided reading Virginia Woolf for a very long time, suspecting her and her privileged Bloomsbury set of intellectual elitism and of believing themselves to somehow enshrine the essence of civilisation (Forster escaped this embargo fortunately). How I smirked when I came across Charles Tansley, the working class academic who can’t seem to fit in to the Ramseys’ elegantly shabby lifestyle in 'To The...more How many prejudices we carry through life, even when we think ourselves to be incapable of bias. I avoided reading Virginia Woolf for a very long time, suspecting her and her privileged Bloomsbury set of intellectual elitism and of believing themselves to somehow enshrine the essence of civilisation (Forster escaped this embargo fortunately). How I smirked when I came across Charles Tansley, the working class academic who can’t seem to fit in to the Ramseys’ elegantly shabby lifestyle in 'To The Lighthouse'. I’m on his side, I thought. But soon, like Tansley, I fell under the beautiful Mrs Ramsey’s spell, and under the spell of Woolf’s writing, which is so unique and inventive that I am very glad to have finally discovered it.
I picked up this book because I came across a claim that Woolf, having finished Ulysses, felt that she could do better in a quarter the amount of pages. Since I’d just finished Ulysses myself, I was curious about Woolf’s foolhardy challenge. I expected to find myself reading her characters’ fragmentary thoughts, realistically prosaic or eruditely obscure depending on the mood, just as in Ulysses but no, Woolf avoids such bold realism by paraphrasing her characters’ thoughts into beautifully crafted, ultra refined sentences. This valuing of beauty over truth, form over content certainly makes the reader’s task a lot easier than in Ulysses, if less challenging, and allows the wonderful structure of this novel to stand out more clearly; there are two distinct sections, both focussed on a trip to a lighthouse and they are separated and connected by a shorter section, a sort of corridor of years, which shows us the disintegration that nature and time work on everything and everyone. I found this symmetrical structure really satisfying, as the two longer sections mirror each other in so many ways and yet are inevitably very different, being separated by time itself. Interestingly, regarding any resemblance to Ulysses, Woolf begins with the word ‘yes’ and ends with ‘yes’ repeated in the last sentences but unlike Joyce, Woolf doesn’t take on a full day, but only the final quarter of a day; she addresses the first quarter of a different day in the last section.
While Woolf avoids the challenge of 'stream of consciousness' writing in favour of reporting her character’s thoughts, she knits those thoughts into the action with great skill; the reader quickly adjusts to the style, as well as to the frequent time shifts and to the occasional shifts in point of view. And while I value the stark realism to be found at times in Ulysses, there is also a lot of truth knitted into the beautiful shape of Woolf’s novel; there are valuable reflections on the challenges of relationships, particularly those of husbands and wives and parents and children, there are interesting musings on art and literature, poetry and philosophy and some very vert apt thoughts on death and dying. This book will stay with me for a long time to come.
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Nov 24, 2012 knig rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, do-you-take-me-for-an-idiot

What drivel is this?

There are so many supplicants at this alter (of the emperor’s new clothes) that I am obviously an illiterate idiot for besmirching it. So be it, I stand fast.

Woolf had a hit with Mrs Dalloway in 1925, and buoyed by her success, obviously decided to capitalise on it by basically…plagerising herself. I guess her thinking must have been ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, cause she, um, ‘borrows’ every literary technique and a fair number of characters as well as the narrative s...more What drivel is this?

There are so many supplicants at this alter (of the emperor’s new clothes) that I am obviously an illiterate idiot for besmirching it. So be it, I stand fast.

Woolf had a hit with Mrs Dalloway in 1925, and buoyed by her success, obviously decided to capitalise on it by basically…plagerising herself. I guess her thinking must have been ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, cause she, um, ‘borrows’ every literary technique and a fair number of characters as well as the narrative style from Mrs Dalloway, hits the ‘replace with’ button (whatever that was in 1927) to change the title and the names, and hey presto: we have ‘To the lighthouse’. Except, it don’t work. Why? Because, Woolf had already exhausted her repertoire of ‘detail deliberation’ and ‘minutae musing’ in Mrs Dalloway. She just has nothing new to say on the subject a mere two years later. If anything , ‘To the lighthouse’ is narrower in breadth and scope and characterisation than ‘Mrs Dalloway’, lets forget about social issues at all (which we had apropos post traumatic shock syndrome in Mrs Dalloway), and at some point, Woolf just seems to give up entirely, as if though creating different viewpoints is just too onerous a task, and so Mrs Ramsey, and Lilly Briscoe and Cam seem to merge into some sort of single narrative consciousness, a blancmange of sameness, or maybe just unapologetic Virginia Woolfness.

Mrs Ramsey is a dead ringer for Mrs Dalloway. Don’t lets even argue. Woolf didn’t even try here. Carmichael/Tansley are Mrs Dalloway’s Peter’s doppelgangers: the married woman’s admirers. Someone might pipe up Mrs Ramsey dies in medias ras. I beg to differ. What do I care that Virginia Woolf writes the words ‘Mrs Ramsey died’ when the next part of the novel is focused on (mainly lilly’s) reminiscences about Mrs Ramsey, so to all effects and purposes we have her straight through the novel with us. There is just no getting rid of the woman, I tell you .In fact, if I had read one more time how beautiful Mrs Ramsey was, I think I might have knocked my iphone out. Enough already. The woman is over fifty, Virginia. I wish there was a way to tell you that men do NOT lose it all over a fifty five year old (married mother of eight). Anyway, Virginia Woolf really should have known this: its not like she couldn’t see what was what in real life. One of her very close friends, the economist Milton Keynes no less, in the Bloomsbury circle with her, married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova who was twenty years younger than him, and could barely speak English. Virginia apparently never got over that and made Lopokova feel miserable everytime they saw each other. Like that was going to sway Keynes’ mind: not when Lopokova apparently danced naked in the moonlight on the lawn at Tilton house and ran commando up and down the Firle hill behind it.

Literary techniques? The one where narrative sequence jumps from character to character just like Mrs Dalloway? Check, we got it here.

This is what happens to most sequels: they’re just never as good as the pilot.
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Feb 07, 2013 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: devastating energy exploding off his tesla coil

Recommended to Mariel by: wave with ten percent of fingers

Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of reality," Andrew had said. And when she said Heavens, she had no notion of what he meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when you're not there."

I have reread To the Lighthouse, secretly, three times in the past six months. I took it inside and outside for its secret. If I could se...more Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of reality," Andrew had said. And when she said Heavens, she had no notion of what he meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when you're not there."

I have reread To the Lighthouse, secretly, three times in the past six months. I took it inside and outside for its secret. If I could see what it looked like when I wasn't there I would get close to my self-hate. You don't have to live with that look over the side of the boat. You can resist tyranny, if you can paint their halo on their picture, thorn the crown. Brush strokes with a wink or is that a semi-colon showing where it bleeds. I thought a lot about Mr. Ramsay standing in front of them. His mournful eyes with unimpeachable grief. Lidded over sentences beginning with how each day has started and will start without his wife. The children have to live with that look on his face. The youngest children are anchored to his back that walks away in tail between legs for past glory and future dimmings. Oh no, is he going to stop here. Oh no, what does he want from me. I am not going to see self-hate hiding in the hills past where our house looks much smaller than it does when it is up close and we are all inside. The feeling of fur on my face, hands and tail are not real. D is not for Dog. Eyes go sad and search over everything and all with a dogs-eye view. See me, peg me. When Mr. Ramsay finds Lily Briscoe on the beach and she goes oh no, I am going to have to sacrifice a part of my self to warm his body with its sad puppy eyes. Give me, love me, me. It wasn't true. When Charles Tansley picks up his white-out brush and goes "Women can't paint, women can't write" it isn't true. The words hover over, threatening to make it true. I felt close to myself in Lily who holds outside and moves in her mind the tree goes here, they go here, this smile here. You don't have to live with that look, if you choose to say something else. Mr. Ramsay wanted to think his wife was stupid. It flattered him to know something she didn't. Mrs. Ramsay felt her coals warmed if the man on her arm walked eggshells in his stupidity of her superior conversation and knowledge. I liked that they repeated in this way. It somehow seemed okay to me because it wasn't always true. Mrs. Ramsay fears to step outside of her truths that he knows better. He feeds on maybes from the lips of young girls who happen along with the right kind of maybe look in their eye. Paint, move, it could be true. I don't want to be Mr. Ramsay and appear as the dog figure in the picture. It is a hot fear that burns out everything else in a reverse version of a mirage. The horror version of the mirage and there are drinks offered but they don't mean anything because you don't trust their intentions. I would have clung to the sides and drank the crazy-eyed salt water, I swear. Of course, you can't worry about that. You have to be you, toes be-damned. If you didn't you wouldn't live at all. Let them fear you on the horizon with your heart on your short sleeves. It's cold out. Do you need a coat? No, I wasn't asking you for your coat. I wonder that I felt my heart stop and cringed in the shadow of impending shame when Mr. Ramsay may be asking for sympathy. He comes across them on the path sharing a story and writes a new ending with his lost gaze. Let him walk on. He'll fire his own. Something is there when you don't see it spread out on top like the last supper.

Knig wrote in her review of To The Lighthouse that it was a bait and switch with the names, a burdened copy of the original fire Mrs. Dalloway. I haven't read Mrs. D again since a long, long time ago. I don't bring this up to disagree with that (goodreads without opinions would be of no interest to me, and no one needs dog-Mariel to come to their defense to have opinions either). I noticed when reading Night and Day that there is a scene alike to one in To the Lighthouse. I liked that they were similar. Both scenes reminded me of a recurring sensation when you can step out of place of how things usually are between people. It's a bit like when Lily has her nice day with Charles on the beach in the reprieve, only these two scenes were really quite similar in being brought to sympathy for another in encountering their helplessness. Dead leaves on trousers, an awkwardness belonging to a babe in the woods. Raise the rifle, set the target, don't shoot. I have felt an unwilling feeling for my work nemesis the Turtle now and then if I see him doing something like eating quietly while lost in a restful thought. He's hungry anyway, and he's gotta eat too. I'd be at a loss to describe the feeling myself but Woolf could do it. A wish for it to be different, maybe no one is unreachable. A longing for no one to go hungry and a trust that they can feed themselves. I wouldn't want anything bad to ever happen to turtle in moments like these. I am not being a bitch when I don't like turtle. Picture any bureaucratic jerk you have ever encountered who made yours or someone else's life stingingly harder than it had to be to stimulate their own spirit and that's turtle. He can be a depressing person to be around day after day. I loved that this feeling reappears in the same way in her books so that I can recognize it when it happens to me. If there is anything that sometimes frustrates me about Woolf is that she tells me too much without letting me see it. It has already happened and what I am holding in my hands is the photograph. The patterns are a way for me to experience and feel moved by what I had not expected to see. Tim wrote in his beautifully apt 'Lighthouse' review that it was like stepping into a living painting. This is so true, and because of these. It happens and something else could happen, because you could resist, or you could choose what you are going to give of yourself. No one made you do it, no one made you live. What you save to eat later is what is special about you that no one else can have. I loved so much the scene when they recite poetry around the dinner table. I wanted to go into that room so badly I can't tell you. To pick up the last refrain and if ghosts could be created out of a willing touching memory it would be that one. It was magic.
So someone you thought you knew in a way that anyone could, only you forgot they could because you were too busy thinking that they could never be anything like yourself. It was that kind of scene in her books and if I can have that scene again to relive it is my magical ghost, my painting in the attic like Dorian Gray only without a facade. So yeah, I guess I dug the repetition. It is more chances, it isn't death, it isn't over.

There is so much I want to say about this book. I've been avoiding reviewing it for simply ages because of that. I don't want to try to say it out loud and find out that I can't. What if I can't write, can't paint. But I think my selfish reason for loving it is a Mr. Ramsay one. I feel safe from self-hate when I read To the Lighthouse. It may be weird but that is a lot of it. These days I've been thinking a lot like Virginia Woolf is my bet to be okay with me because she knows how to move on and hold on and let go, you know? (There's a part in The Years that made me want to cry with longing and I haven't figured out why yet. It's when Sara imitates her sister Maggie taking care of the cat. Something of what you can see in others, what you can't have, what you'll lose. I feel like that about To the Lighthouse all over my body. Sighs.)(less)

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Feb 16, 2011 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: The Woolfians here on GR

All I know right now is that:

a) I liked it better than Mrs. Dalloway (purely subjectively/emotionally, which would seem to be the best way to take in and then respond to this work), and
b) my trick of using Atwood as a lever to catapult me into the depths of Woolf seems to have worked, at least partially, for some strange reason.

In trying to come up with points of comparison (see comments below) between Woolf and Atwood while reading this, I first of all could only find contrast, but secondly c...more

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May 10, 2010 Caris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Caris by: Elizabeth

Shelves: 2010

We perished, each alone.

Mr. Ramsay is on the boat with James and Cam. The two are united in their disdain for their father, and their coldness toward him almost another member of the family. Their resolve, like everything else that has ever existed, cracks and breaks, betraying their determination. A feeling of fondness for the old man permeates the scene, as if it were the very wind in the sails. Or the mutilated fish discarded, alive, into the water.

Because what does it matter, this fondness?...more We perished, each alone.

Mr. Ramsay is on the boat with James and Cam. The two are united in their disdain for their father, and their coldness toward him almost another member of the family. Their resolve, like everything else that has ever existed, cracks and breaks, betraying their determination. A feeling of fondness for the old man permeates the scene, as if it were the very wind in the sails. Or the mutilated fish discarded, alive, into the water.

Because what does it matter, this fondness? What is an eventual acceptance of Mr. Ramsay going to do for anyone?

I’m not going to pretend that I understand this novel. I don’t know how many times I would have to read it before I grasped half of what it has to offer. It was fantastic. The words- oh, the words- were so lovingly laid down that the scenes just sort of haunted my mind even after I had put the book down. To be honest, though, I don’t know that I will ever come back to it. Not for a long time, anyway. For the last few days, I have set the book on my nightstand, turned out the light, and have been trapped in that house. Trapped with the Ramsays. And I didn’t like it any more than they did.

That line hit me, each and every time it was repeated. We perished. Us. The entire family. Is Ramsay talking about the real deaths? Figurative deaths? I suppose that part is unimportant. It is the we that matters. He seems to identify the family as a single entity, but acknowledges its fragmentation. Each alone. It’s how we live; it’s how we die. Even when we’re heading for the destination, we’re too late. It’s the we that perished. It’s the family that disintegrated. It does not matter how anyone feels now. The family is gone.

This book was difficult to read. I never seemed to have enough time to dedicate to the task. But even when I did, even when I had hours ahead of me (like in the middle of the night), I just wanted to stop. I spent most of my time trying to tap into the feeling in the book, but each time I finally accessed it, I wanted to stop. The heaviness was too great, the loss too profound. I wished that something catastrophic would have happened to the house as time passed so that no one would have been able to return: Mr. Ramsay with his untied boots, Lily with her unfinished painting. So much unfinished business, like ghosts returning to the living. But everything was already dead.

But I didn't like it, bitch.
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Jul 09, 2010 Miriam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: writers

Recommended to Miriam by: Elizabeth

Shelves: gender

You know how you secretly fear that if anyone really knew you, knew all your pettinesses and fears and insecurities and unkindnesses, they wouldn't, couldn't, like you? I'm sure Virginia Woolf was familiar with that feeling. I suspect she went back and forth on the question of whether it were true or not. At times she seems to love her characters; at other moments, to despise them. The characters display the same shifting extremes of emotion for one another, moving from an almost idolizing devot...more

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May 18, 2012 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the midst of reading this I achieved a literary orgasm so charged and intense that the money shot gummed my right eye right the fuck shut.

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Mar 30, 2012 Erik rated it 5 of 5 stars

E.M. Forster (if I remember correctly) once referred to this book as a "novel in sonata form." While the idea of literary works being based upon or compared to musical compositions is nothing new, Forster's (?) remark appears a bit superficial when applied here. The novel's division into three distinct sections (or "movements") does seem to mirror the basic structure of a typical Classical-era sonata, but the mood and tempo of each do not vary considerably as they would in such a musical work –...more

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May 07, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: in-by-of-england, virginia-woolf-hogarth-bloomsbury, reviewed, scottish, overshare

I feel like a child. This may have everything to do with the fact that regardless of what my job title is or that I have the livelihoods of more than a dozen people dependent on my decisions (oh, god, I really just realized that), I feel like an impostor there. How can anyone think I'm capable of that? (It's also a fairly common feeling among women in software development, IT generally; there have been studies, which don't help, but I know them anyway). The feeling has everything to do with the...more

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Aug 11, 2007 Teresa Jusino rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: readandreviewed

Yesterday, on the subway to work, I finally finished Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse." It took me longer to read than such a short book probably should have, but it's such dense writing that, in a way, I'm surprised it didn't take me longer. This has been said before by people much smarter than I, but I'll say it again: Virginia Woolf was a genius. As I closed the book, I said to myself I want to write. Like. That.

Synopsis (from the Webster Encyclopedia of Literature):
"The novel is one of Wo...more Yesterday, on the subway to work, I finally finished Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse." It took me longer to read than such a short book probably should have, but it's such dense writing that, in a way, I'm surprised it didn't take me longer. This has been said before by people much smarter than I, but I'll say it again: Virginia Woolf was a genius. As I closed the book, I said to myself I want to write. Like. That.

Synopsis (from the Webster Encyclopedia of Literature):
"The novel is one of Woolf's most successful and accessible experiments in the stream-of-consciousness style. The three sections of the book take place
between 1910 and 1920 and revolve around various members of the Ramsay family during visits to their summer residence on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. A central motif of the novel is the conflict between the feminine and masculine principles at work in the universe.

With her emotional, poetic frame of mind, Mrs. Ramsay represents the female principle, while Mr. Ramsay, a self-centered philosopher, expresses the male principle in his rational point of view. Both are flawed by their limited
perspectives. A painter and friend of the family, Lily Briscoe, is Woolf's vision of the androgynous artist who personifies the ideal blending of male and female qualities. Her successful completion of a painting that she has been working on since the beginning of the novel is symbolic of this
unification."

It's funny, but until I read that, I had trouble rationalizing the need for Lily Briscoe - but now it makes perfect sense...I did notice the comparison between male and female principles in Mr. & Mrs. Ramsay, and Woolf captured them so well. I loved that she captured the weaknesses in both positions - that neither one of them was completely right or completely wrong. Because while Mrs. Ramsay did much good, was extremely nurturing, and saw the value in talking about something for its own sake and not to make oneself look superior; she also did good deeds for the acclaim it would bring her, and was vain about her own beauty. Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsay was a great thinker, but he also sucked the energy out of a room when he got depressed, was never affectionate with his children, and thought his wife stupid. Strangely (or maybe not so strangely) enough, I felt a lot of love between the two.
The only part of this book that I didn't particularly enjoy was the middle section, "Time Passes." While I understand why it was important to the novel it was, quite simply, boring. Lots of description of the house falling apart, of the elderly caretakers...time passes, but very slowly. ;)

The rest of the book, though, was brilliant! I related to so much of it - more than I probably would've liked to. Mrs. Ramsay's "good deeds", Mr. Ramsay's ambition...But I particularly identified with Cam and James' (two of the Ramsay children) relationship with their father, with James' objection to "tyranny", and Cam's indecision. They each seemed to personify the fluctuating views I have of my own father... :) What I love so much about Virginia Woolf's writing is that she manages to capture all the intricacies of a single moment and make it grand, epic. A person sitting down to dinner becomes a major, interesting event. Yet, as epic as these moments become, they are also extremely familiar. I was surprised that within this fictional family of English people at the turn of the century, I found so many versions of myself.
I'm going to stop here, because I can't write about this novel more intelligently than it itself was written. The book should speak for itself in this case.

(less)

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Jun 20, 2009 The Chaotic Reader rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, favorites, classics

My review of To the Lighthouse is posted on The Chaotic Reader.

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Aug 03, 2010 J. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-reads, favorites

When Harold Bloom urged us to pursue difficult pleasure, he must have been talking about this book. Although short, it requires patience. The prose is tear-inducing beautiful, the plot simple, the relationships complex. I read the short chapter on Mrs. Ramsay's death aloud, over and over again. To say I loved this book is a gross understatement. The themes of passing time and family relationships really moved me.

Indulge me here for a moment...this book is difficult, probably boring. There are n...more

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Jun 10, 2009 Bram rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Bram by: Choupette

Shelves: 2009, favorites

1
Within the first 20 pages of To the Lighthouse, I fell head over heels in love. Gorgeous, fluid writing…the kind that gives me that buzz. You know that buzz. It was pure joy. There are passages here that unlock memories and past smells; sounds; feels; the summation of which reaches a crucial liminal stage that, when crossed, offers that pinnacle of reading: the buzz, the click, whatever you want to call it. At least, that was my experience from reading ecstatic sentences like this:

She saw the...more

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Sep 27, 2012 Emilian Kasemi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, reviews, read-and-reread

If there is an artist who has passed through the entire spectrum of what we call "the pain of living", she is Virginia Woolf.
She was 59 years old when she decided to put an end to her life, troubled by continuous nervous breakdown and major depressive disorder.
She wrote to her husband:
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems t...more If there is an artist who has passed through the entire spectrum of what we call "the pain of living", she is Virginia Woolf.
She was 59 years old when she decided to put an end to her life, troubled by continuous nervous breakdown and major depressive disorder.
She wrote to her husband:
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do.
Mrs Ramsay ( The Graces assembling seemed to have joined hands in meadows of asphodel to compose that face. ) is a lovely,tender,caring mother.
Ramsay, her husband, it seems, on the contrary, acts like seeking for something that belongs to the mind, hidden and intuited, and in doing so he acts the same way as a butterfly trapped inside a burning light, fighting to go to another place impossible to reach, with sharper and reassuring brightness.
These two opposite personalities, distant bodies, sometimes with distrust of one for the other, live, on the contrary, an attraction that offers both the reasons for its existence, as if none of them could be conceived without the presence of 'other: "Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away, to enclose her and her husband, and to give to each that solace which two different notes, one high, one low, struck together, seem to give each other as they combine.

The Ramsay family has nothing special than the other families: the same rules, the same hypocrisy, the same habits, the same mentality...
But Woolf goes beyond it, crumbling it all and going to look for those components that perpetuate also in humans, the impulses and universal vibrations. Now think of the definition of love of William Bankes for Mrs. Ramsay: It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain.

There is so much to talk about this book and its many interpretations, about Lily, about the symbol of the lighthouse. So, if we try to find the mystery they represent, maybe we could say the Lily's words at the end : "I have had my vision".
That is, knowing the truth, is the meaning of our lives.
Or, the truth could be revealed in the same way it was to James when he finally got to the lighthouse : "So it was like that, James thought, the Lighthouse one had seen across the bay all these years; it was a stark tower on a bare rock. It satisfied him.
This is the second time I read the book and I still think the most significant lines for me which can explain the whole journey of Woolf it is : "...she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into
long-legged monsters..."Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again."

The literary work in Woolf, one might even say, casts upon us a kind of transfiguration through which you leave this world, too small and insufficient, and perhaps even useless...(less)

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Jul 24, 2012 brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

'this stone will survive longer than all of shakespeare' speaks a character in to the lighthouse and it's a chilling thought: immortality through one's work is fool's gold; even for the most long-surviving, even for shakespeare - possibly the best put-togetherer of words the world has known - once it all goes 'pop!' (and it will), the author of macbeth and stalin and the cabbie who took me home last night are all the same: nada.

a recent article claims that philip larkin - that other great Poet...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Vale rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: english-literature

Ho letto varie review offerte dagli altri utenti e mi ha colpito una in particolare in cui, insieme ad una stellina, si sintetizzava così la storia: "C'è una donna che dipinge un quadro e delle persone devono andare a visitare un faro, ma non partono".
Quanto è vero.
Il romanzo di Virginia Woolf è senza trama portante per volere della stessa autrice, la storia è flusso di coscienza, dall'inizio alla fine prevalgono i pensieri dei personaggi: delusioni, sogni, speranze, aspettative, interpretazion...more

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May 24, 2012 Simona Bartolotta rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classici

"Loro due stavano lì, isolati dal resto del mondo. L'immensa autocommiserazione del signor Ramsay, quel suo bisogno di compassione si riversava e si allargava in pozze ai piedi di lei, e tutto quel che Lily seppe fare, miserabile peccatrice qual era, fu di tirarsi la gonna un po' più su perché non si bagnasse."

Se c'è un'immagine, un ricordo di questo libro che mi rimarrà per sempre impresso, ebbene, sarà questa scena. Lui con la sua muta, vaga, indecifrabile richiesta d'aiuto, e lei, che impassi...more

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Jan 06, 2012 William rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20-ce, fiction, uk

Notes on second reading, mostly on structure.

The first section, "The Window," is the longest and its action spans a single twenty-four hour period. Fifteen people, mostly the Ramsay Family but also several guests, are going about their activities at this great house on the beach in Skye (Hebrides). It is the end of the season, September already, and their holiday will soon be over. They will all return to their home in the city. Woolf's nifty technique here is to take this relatively limited st...more Notes on second reading, mostly on structure.

The first section, "The Window," is the longest and its action spans a single twenty-four hour period. Fifteen people, mostly the Ramsay Family but also several guests, are going about their activities at this great house on the beach in Skye (Hebrides). It is the end of the season, September already, and their holiday will soon be over. They will all return to their home in the city. Woolf's nifty technique here is to take this relatively limited story, that day at the house, and to wring from it the most enormous depths of insight and feeling, always keeping the actual scope of the events narrow. Otherwise events would swamp story. Some quoted dialog here but the narrative mostly proceeds by way of free indirect speech (a style of third-person narration which uses some characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech).

Switching swiftly from one character to another, Woolf avoids jarring disconnections by keeping these sections tightly linked thematically. The writing, which goes very deep into internal mullings of the characters, means to suggest the individual stream of conciousness. This can only be an approximation, of course, for as postmodernism has shown us, if it's shown us anything, is that all texts are constructs, fabrications. Yet the simulation of the thought process is very intriguingly done. I also liked the way we can watch the characters's mood swings. Perfectly reasonable people become irrational and angry and then the mood swings back again and they find themselves reasonable or apologetic (to themselves) or remorseful or delighted or flummoxed--what have you. There are also untoward thoughts. Such as when Mrs. Ramsay thinks 'We are all in the Lord's hands', and at once upbraids herself for she believes no such thing. So there's a mercurial quality: tempers rise and fall and we see their entire arc.

The second section, "Time Passing," which is much shorter than the first, stays with the house and the old housekeeper, Mrs. McNab, who shows up weekly to dust. The house is ramshackle and sits empty. We follow the sea winds as they sneak in here or there, tossing up bits of dust, pushing an unlatched door to and fro, tugging at the shawl Mrs. Ramsay has hung up. The housekeeper comes and goes. We watch the house deteriorate over time. It's the period immediately before and after World War I and so the normal cycle of the Ramsay Family's life has been interrupted. We stay with the house, which falls to pieces. Leaks develop, etc. Starlings and rats and every manner of insect gets in to make their various depredations. We learn of various family casualties in a matter of fact way that suggests stage directions. Then after ten years Mrs. McNab gets a letter in which she is told to make the house ready for habitation. She arrives with a friend and the cleaning begins. The carpenters arrive. The doors are locked. (This is just an overview. Believe me, nothing can prepare you for the vividness of the storytelling here. Throughout the book is a dazzler.)

In the last section, "To The Lighthouse," set ten years after the action of the first section. The original lodgers, those that remain among us, return. Woolf goes a little further here with her experiment. Now, not only do we quickly zip from one character to the next, but within the mentality of a single character we may slide from setting to setting in a manner suggesting one's endlessly divagating thoughts. This last section is more reflective, whereas the first is not at all. There is a relentlessness about the present-day setting in part one. We get very little backstory about the chatacters other than their professions and immediate relationships. But in the last section we are carried ever further into the thoughts of the characters, and there is less delineation between past and present.

As my GR friend Reese put it, she was glad to finish this book and put it aside at last. She is right. The reading here is work. The characters, because we get such an in-depth view of their mental processes, can strike one as selfish. But it is the technique that, to my mind, makes it all worthwhile. To The Lighthouse does not flow like, say, Mrs. Dalloway or Orlando. Let the reader be warned that he must earn his passage.(less)

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Feb 24, 2007 amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

My first Virginia Woolf book! Maybe Virginia Woolf books are like Christopher Guest movies in that the first one you read/see is forever afterwards your favorite.

I'm not used to "identifying" with characters in books, even though that's how a lot of people (high school students) talk about what they read. As in: "This book is, like, all about tragedy and loss, and I can TOTALLY IDENTIFY with that because my parents just took my convertible keys away and I'm really sad about it. So I really know...more

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Apr 05, 2010 RandomAnthony rated it 5 of 5 stars

He read, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through a bramble, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page after page.

(p. 193)

Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse is an amazing book, evidence of raw talent, the type that causes one...more He read, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through a bramble, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page after page.

(p. 193)

Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse is an amazing book, evidence of raw talent, the type that causes one to wonder why you would ever bother trying your hand at fiction because only a few writers over the course of a century could touch this quality. The novel’s stream of consciousness style is nothing short of amazing. Even when the stream of consciousness addresses place instead of people Woolf’s genius is apparent; the “Time Passes” section alone is awe-inspiring in its compacting of nuanced, telling details over the years of an empty summer house. Her characterizations, second by second, mirror thought in startling ways. I could feel myself falling in the same patterns as the characters. Woolf’s descriptions of how one could detest and admire someone within the length of a dinner party are astounding.

This novel challenges the reader. I swear, I felt like I should stretch, maybe do a couple jumping jacks, and put on a headband before I started. Reading To The Lighthouse is work, make no mistake, but rewarding work. I read ten, twenty pages at a time before putting down the text and walking around the block before I could concentrate enough to dive in again. I found myself reading the expansive passages over and over half to bathe in the language and half to make sure I understood what in goddamn hell was happening. I was, I think, about 80% successful.

Woolf’s shooting at the literary and psychological stars are not completely successful; I don't mean to say she's perfect. Some generalizations early in the novel concerning the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey were simplistic, I thought, and the novel’s last twenty pages lost me. I didn’t expect to understand everything.

Sidebar: My wife’s family has a summer home and I’ve had experiences that while not entirely similar to the Ramseys’ were close enough to lead me to consider my summers in a new light. There is a paradoxically frenzied desire for calm and the oppressive expectation to perceive the summer home opportunity as perfection. Framing this summer, after reading Woolf, will be interesting.

I highly recommend To The Lighthouse. I’ve never read anything like it, and I can’t help but wonder why Woolf isn’t more popular. She was a flat-out fucking genius, a first ballot hall of famer, if you will, the type of writer who exhausts the reader and leaves him/her feeling better for time spent with her work. How can you put a price on that, you know? To The Lighthouse is a classic, and when you’re ready, give her a shot. Prevail, like Mr. Ramsey in the passage above, up the “single narrow path”; Woolf’s work is worth it.
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Jul 18, 2009 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars

On the first two pages, I thought of dropping the book or thinking that this classic is bound to get a one star (I don't like it). However, when I finally finished reading the entire novel, I decided to give this a five-star rating (It's Amazing!)

Really, this one is AMAZING! It's like reading a deep moving poem in prose. The dialogue is minimized as most of the narratives are thoughts of the main protagonist, Mrs. Ramsay. It's mesmerizing as for me, the storytelling style is one of a kind . Amon...more On the first two pages, I thought of dropping the book or thinking that this classic is bound to get a one star (I don't like it). However, when I finally finished reading the entire novel, I decided to give this a five-star rating (It's Amazing!)

Really, this one is AMAZING! It's like reading a deep moving poem in prose. The dialogue is minimized as most of the narratives are thoughts of the main protagonist, Mrs. Ramsay. It's mesmerizing as for me, the storytelling style is one of a kind . Among the masters, I am putting Virginia Woolf in the same league as John Steinbeck in GRAPES OF WRATH, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and Sebastian Faulks in BIRDSONG. They are all those classic novels that I really like and in some ways, life-changing. However, I am not recommending this to people who are not trained to read classics or who do not like classics as it could be downright boring.

This is a story with lots of meanings which anybody can relate to. It's about moving on as Virginal Woolf wrote this story to finally end her grief over the death of his mother and father. It's about a father and son relationship as James, the youngest son, finally got the approval of Mr. Ramsay when the trip to the lighthouse happened in Part 3 (The Lighthouse). It's about women's liberation ("women can't write, women can't paint") as Lily Briscoe finally completed her paiting at the end of the novel. It's about the circle of life as several characters died in Part 2 (Time Passes) that connects Part I (Windows) to Part 3 (The Lighthouse) signifying the mortality of men.

I picked this book because I would like to know more about Virginia Woolf after knowing that she was one literary master who committed suicide. They say that reading is connecting with the author's mind and I am glad to have just glimpsed into the mind of great novelist like Virginia Woolf. I have already lined up MRS. DALLOWAY - Time Magazine's one of the 100 Best Novels of the 20TH Century.

Bravo, Mrs. Ramsay! Bravo, Mrs. Woolf!(less)

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Apr 22, 2010 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: prose-poetry

I just realized why I don't like this book as much as I like the others.
I said in my initial review (written years after reading) that I found it "almost too conventional." I see now, that isn't really the case. It isn't conventional in style or even in perspective. --It's Mrs. Ramsey that bothers me. She's conventional! Yes, I realize that's the point. She's meant to represent the Victorian mother. I just can't tolerate her. I feel smothered every time she's on the page. I couldn't take any mor...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Brain Pain: * Questions, Resources, and General Banter - To the Lighthouse	14	58	Mar 01, 2013 12:26pm
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Three - To the Lighthouse - Part 3, Ch 1 - 13	14	24	Jan 31, 2013 03:58pm
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Two - To the Lighthouse - Part 1, Ch 13-19 & Part 2, Ch 1-10	34	36	Jan 27, 2013 07:49pm
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week One - To the Lighthouse - Part 1, Ch. 1 - 12	37	53	Jan 21, 2013 10:10am
Brain Pain: * Schedule for Discussions - To the Lighthouse	1	46	Dec 26, 2012 12:22pm

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