From the Bookshelf of The Reading Challenge Group…

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

Start date: December 1, 2014

Finish date: December 31, 2014

Discussion: Group Read Archive 2014-16

Why we're reading this: Classics Group Read - December 2014
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Group Read Archive 2014-16

Genre Group Read (Humour) - December 2016 - You Are Not So Smart
By Allison , Quest Hound · 11 posts · 30 views

last updated Dec 28, 2016 04:05PM

Alternate Group Read (Classics) - December 2016 - Mansfield Park
By Allison , Quest Hound · 5 posts · 18 views

last updated Dec 04, 2016 09:34AM

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What Members Thought

Mar 09, 2024 Wendy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, blooms-western-canon, 1001-books, 2024, women-and-the-void

This was an "aha moment" book for me. I had to give it my undivided attention in order to follow the abruptly fracturing threads of time and shifting points of view. If my attention wandered for a minute, I'd have to flip back and reread an entire page. The experience was like standing with my nose an inch away from a pointillism painting. At first all you perceive vivid dots of various colors, and very slowly as you read the painting recedes. Suddenly, a picture appears, a form out of chaos. Bu ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 01, 2013 Carol rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, modernism, woolf, autobiographical-fiction, stream-of-consciousness-writing

Once again, I love her work and this book is brilliant!! It is something to truly enjoy and savor every morsel over and over again. "I am instantly transported to the Scottish isle of Skye to the vacation home of the Ramsay's and friends. Young James Ramsay wants to visit the lighthouse near their home on the morrow but the weather looks to be inclement so the trip doubtful." Thus begins the novel as Woolf with pitch perfect prose begins to describe interior and exterior life on the Isle of Skye Once again, I love her work and this book is brilliant!! It is something to truly enjoy and savor every morsel over and over again. "I am instantly transported to the Scottish isle of Skye to the vacation home of the Ramsay's and friends. Young James Ramsay wants to visit the lighthouse near their home on the morrow but the weather looks to be inclement so the trip doubtful." Thus begins the novel as Woolf with pitch perfect prose begins to describe interior and exterior life on the Isle of Skye. Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay take completely different approaches to life: he relies on his reason, while she depends on her emotions. They share the knowledge that the world around them is transient. Mr. Ramsay's overly rational approach makes him inconsiderate of other people at times and he suffers from knowing his work in philosophy may not long outlast himself. Mrs. Ramsay deals with the transient nature of life by trying to make every moment beautiful and memorable. There is a boar's head skull tacked up on the wall of the children's room that serves as symbol in the novel of the ephemeral nature of life. The novel is divided into 3 sections: The Window, Time Passes, and The Lighthouse. Time Passes has some of the most sublime descriptive prose.

It is an autobiographical novel that Woolf wrote as a way of understanding and dealing with unresolved issues concerning the death of her mother, and their family visits to St Ives, Cornwall, where her father rented a house. When Woolf was 13 years old, her mother died and, like Mr. Ramsay, her father Leslie Stephen plunged into gloom and self-pity. Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell wrote that reading the sections of the novel that describe Mrs Ramsay was like seeing her mother raised from the dead. Their brother Adrian was not allowed to go on an expedition to Godrevy Lighthouse, just as in the novel where James looks forward to visiting the lighthouse and is disappointed when the trip is cancelled. Lily Briscoe's meditations on painting are a way for Woolf to explore her own creative process (and also that of her painter sister), since Woolf thought of writing (steam of consciousness) in the same way that Lily thought of painting. The house was used by the family as a family retreat during the summer for the next 10 years.

Woolf published To The Lighthouse on the anniversary of her mother's death. ...more

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Jan 23, 2014 Kelly rated it really liked it

This is a dense book, although very little happens. Woolf writes a persuasive description of the inner landscape, doused in a perpetual sense of something being not quite right. Beautifully written.

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