From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

Start date: March 15, 2016

Finish date: April 14, 2016

Why we're reading this: A 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in …more
[close] A 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

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Apr 05, 2016 Sara rated it really liked it

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Today is 5/15/2020, and I felt pressured (by myself) to change my rating on this novel. I find that all the details of it stick in my mind and I think of it frequently. How can such a thing be true? Apparently, the joy in reading Woolf is often in the afterglow and not the immediate. So, I have upgraded to 4-stars so that I can sleep at night.

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My 2016 review:

2-stars for enjoyment, 4-stars for significance. I compromised at 3-stars.

While I can fully appreciate the depth Today is 5/15/2020, and I felt pressured (by myself) to change my rating on this novel. I find that all the details of it stick in my mind and I think of it frequently. How can such a thing be true? Apparently, the joy in reading Woolf is often in the afterglow and not the immediate. So, I have upgraded to 4-stars so that I can sleep at night.

**************************
My 2016 review:

2-stars for enjoyment, 4-stars for significance. I compromised at 3-stars.

While I can fully appreciate the depth and importance of the themes Woolf deals with in this novella, it is her style and approach that make it so hard for me to praise it. It is a scant 159 pages and yet I have read books of 1000 pages with less drag and suffering (my suffering not the characters). I must say, for me, it was like reading one very, very long run-on sentence without being given even the respite of a comma to allow me to take my breath. I think Virginia Woolf would be happy to know I felt that. I believe it was her intent.

Woolf packs a wallop into such a short work. One gets a true sense of the almost insurmountable differences between the sexes and, for that matter, the isolation of the individual from the society in which they figure. The lighthouse looms as the unattainable goal at the beginning of the novel and the ultimate disappointment at its end. The mid-section is a jarring departure from the already loosely constructed story, and again that is Woolf’s full intent. It is almost in passing that we learn that Mrs. Ramsey has died suddenly, and the impact of how we are told is a reflection of the way in which people pass from life to death in reality. In fact, the lack of meaning in life itself seems to be another of Woolf’s themes. We see in both Mr. Ramsey and Lily a search for meaning in their work, something of permanence that will outlive them and we know that there is little chance that either of them will be remembered in any significant way when they have gone.

I believe this work has significance and fully understand why Woolf receives high regard and accolades, so it will seem a bit confusing when I say that this will no doubt be the last Woolf I will tackle. It is my third try, and I am either too shallow or she is too complicated, but I am far too old to devote time to reading that feels more like torture than satisfaction. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Well, Mr. Albee, I can now answer that question. I am. ...more

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