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To the Lighthouse (1927)
by Virginia Woolf

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59716.To_the_Lighthouse?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="To the Lighthouse (1927)" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1172302627m/59716.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59716.To_the_Lighthouse?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">To the Lighthouse</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6765.Virginia_Woolf">Virginia Woolf</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5095760?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>This is sumptuous and compelling writing that's hard to stop reading. The rhythm of one sentence flows into the rhythm of a paragraph and off into the rhythm of a page and a chapter. Woolf's stream of consciousness masks her other skills. The work is tight--for instance intrusions of past-tense narratives (Mr. Ramsay's consciousness allowing in of the particular memory of Mrs. Ramsay's death, now past) are all handled in almost a format (parens, short stuttered sentences set off in style from the other more meandering prose). The shifts in point of view, often mid paragraph, and the blatant disregard for that rule that a pronoun refers to what came immediately before, are not disorienting as they would be (and are) in less able writers' hands. Above all (well, or more fairly said, among many other gifts), Woolf is a master of clarity and simplicity. The story of To the Lighthouse is a very simple rise and fall narrative driven by surprise. What you believed to be true in part I is revealed in part III to be merely what was held in one character's point of view. In that sense the stream of consciousness and shifting perspective are utterly justified. She is as masterful as Joyce in this way: she builds suspense and tension through the endlessly shocking revelation of what someone "really" thinks. And more. There's so much more that makes this work genius, breathlessly impressive and able. It is also pure pleasure, like Proust. What a gift this book is. This is going to sound completely over the top, but in some ways reading this work, finally, and much later than I would have wished, was like reading the Bible--as a non-believer, late enough in life that you already knew all its (now-) cliches and morality tales. Reading Woolf snapped a whole genre of female writers from the 70s and 80s in to context for me. Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion--we are all writing under Woolf's influence. ANd how odd (and prescient) that this book, or what it teaches the writer, would wind up being a kind of a secret reference-sheet for women. Why aren't men ripping her off too? This I don't understand, but the fact that Woolf's subject matter is, more or less, the secret and expansive inner life of women's consciousness, it is apt. 
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/66384?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Elizabeth's review
rating:

This is sumptuous and compelling writing that's hard to stop reading. The rhythm of one sentence flows into the rhythm of a paragraph and off into the rhythm of a page and a chapter. Woolf's stream of consciousness masks her other skills. The work is tight--for instance intrusions of past-tense narratives (Mr. Ramsay's consciousness allowing in of the particular memory of Mrs. Ramsay's death, now past) are all handled in almost a format (parens, short stuttered sentences set off in style from the other more meandering prose). The shifts in point of view, often mid paragraph, and the blatant disregard for that rule that a pronoun refers to what came immediately before, are not disorienting as they would be (and are) in less able writers' hands. Above all (well, or more fairly said, among many other gifts), Woolf is a master of clarity and simplicity. The story of To the Lighthouse is a very simple rise and fall narrative driven by surprise. What you believed to be true in part I is reve...more This is sumptuous and compelling writing that's hard to stop reading. The rhythm of one sentence flows into the rhythm of a paragraph and off into the rhythm of a page and a chapter. Woolf's stream of consciousness masks her other skills. The work is tight--for instance intrusions of past-tense narratives (Mr. Ramsay's consciousness allowing in of the particular memory of Mrs. Ramsay's death, now past) are all handled in almost a format (parens, short stuttered sentences set off in style from the other more meandering prose). The shifts in point of view, often mid paragraph, and the blatant disregard for that rule that a pronoun refers to what came immediately before, are not disorienting as they would be (and are) in less able writers' hands. Above all (well, or more fairly said, among many other gifts), Woolf is a master of clarity and simplicity. The story of To the Lighthouse is a very simple rise and fall narrative driven by surprise. What you believed to be true in part I is revealed in part III to be merely what was held in one character's point of view. In that sense the stream of consciousness and shifting perspective are utterly justified. She is as masterful as Joyce in this way: she builds suspense and tension through the endlessly shocking revelation of what someone "really" thinks. And more. There's so much more that makes this work genius, breathlessly impressive and able. It is also pure pleasure, like Proust. What a gift this book is. This is going to sound completely over the top, but in some ways reading this work, finally, and much later than I would have wished, was like reading the Bible--as a non-believer, late enough in life that you already knew all its (now-) cliches and morality tales. Reading Woolf snapped a whole genre of female writers from the 70s and 80s in to context for me. Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion--we are all writing under Woolf's influence. ANd how odd (and prescient) that this book, or what it teaches the writer, would wind up being a kind of a secret reference-sheet for women. Why aren't men ripping her off too? This I don't understand, but the fact that Woolf's subject matter is, more or less, the secret and expansive inner life of women's consciousness, it is apt. ...less

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