To the Lighthouse in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Sep 07, 2011 Jeff Scott rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001books, fiction, overdrive-library, audiobooks, discovery-of-the-self

Virginia Woolf is the kind of author I have long dreaded. I had a bad experience with Mrs. Dalloway for a book group I was running. The text is dense with no breaks (something I dread as a reader). I still picked up To The Lighthouse. I chose an audiobook version read by Juliet Stevenson thinking that it might be easier to get through it without the intimidating text. I think it worked. I really enjoyed it even though there is even less action in this book than in Mrs. Dalloway. The inner though Virginia Woolf is the kind of author I have long dreaded. I had a bad experience with Mrs. Dalloway for a book group I was running. The text is dense with no breaks (something I dread as a reader). I still picked up To The Lighthouse. I chose an audiobook version read by Juliet Stevenson thinking that it might be easier to get through it without the intimidating text. I think it worked. I really enjoyed it even though there is even less action in this book than in Mrs. Dalloway. The inner thoughts of the Ramseys, particularly Mrs. Ramsey was very illuminating and provided a criticism to a patriarchal society that still has remnants today. I enjoyed the introspection on what it means to be a wife and mother, how children can sometimes view their father, and how important it is to enjoy what’s going on in your life right now, at this moment since it could all be swept away.

The entire story takes place in two days set ten years apart. The first day involves the discussion as to whether to go to the lighthouse as the book title indicates. There is very little dialogue and action, but the stream of consciousness style is very compelling. Inner passions and philosophical musings come through in a very poetic style. It’s the kind of narrative for poets and dreamers. I occasionally had trouble, especially as an audiobook, because it becomes difficult to discern whether the voice is the inner thoughts of the character or the narrator. It also has this dreamy quality that can be at times almost nonsensical. It’s the type of thoughts that would race through one’s head before they went to sleep or if very deep in thought. So deep that one could fall asleep or forget where they were until someone startled them by their presence. It’s the kid of book for those that would enjoy a story told in a lyrical way with criticism towards patriarchal dominance and overbearing social structure.

Favorite Passages:

"Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr Ramsay excited in his children’s breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was (James thought), but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgement. What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness (here Mr Ramsay would straighten his back and narrow his little blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure." p. 3

"How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people." p. 43

"It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still." p. 35

"Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either. These two 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. Nothing made up for the loss. When she read just now to James, “and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets,” and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up and lose all that? He was the most gifted, the most sensitive of her children. But all, she thought, were full of promise. Prue, a perfect angel with the others, and sometimes now, at night especially, she took one’s breath away with her beauty. Andrew—even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild creatures now, scampering about over the country all day long. As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands. If they had charades, Rose made the dresses; made everything; liked best arranging tables, flowers, anything. She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James’s head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a baby." p. 54

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