To the Lighthouse in James Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die

Feb 25, 2010 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-literature, e-books, fiction-20th-century, mtbr-challenge-2014, gutenberg, read-2014, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, novellas

Free download available at eBooks@Adelaide.

Opening lines:
“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch. ...more

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Mar 22, 2020 Chuck rated it it was amazing

Prior to Lighthouse, the only other Woolf I had read was "Mrs. Dalloway". As I dove into Lighthouse it all came back to me how hard Woolf makes you work for your reward. She so brilliantly weaves in massive details of the wide ranging thoughts of her characters, all in the third person, no less. It's so easy to want to dislike most of the characters, after listening to their inner static as they work through longings, conflicts, crises, and intimacy or the avoidance of it. But just like with Mrs Prior to Lighthouse, the only other Woolf I had read was "Mrs. Dalloway". As I dove into Lighthouse it all came back to me how hard Woolf makes you work for your reward. She so brilliantly weaves in massive details of the wide ranging thoughts of her characters, all in the third person, no less. It's so easy to want to dislike most of the characters, after listening to their inner static as they work through longings, conflicts, crises, and intimacy or the avoidance of it. But just like with Mrs. Dalloway, I finally realized that the inside of their heads sounds an awful lot like mine - and I think that's where Woolf hooks us. It's as if we can learn to tolerate the neurotic chatter that others deal with we might then begin to have some compassion for our own experience. Once this clicked in for me, the moments and micro-moments of transcendence are everywhere in Lighthouse as it was in Mrs. Dalloway.

An important difference: Mrs. Dalloway drives a pretty simple linear plot right to its satisfying conclusion. Lighthouse jumps around and seems to be a meditation on the impact of others on us through memory. The first section of the book gives us the Ramsey's and their many children plus other hangers-on who vacation with them in a large house overlooking the coast of the Isle of Skye, where an ominous working lighthouse can be seen. Much of the plot in this section focuses on whether the family will find a safe time to take a boat to visit the lighthouse. One of the regular visitors to there is a struggling artist/painter named Lily. We learn of the deep but difficult bond of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey. Woolf's dissection of their marriage - he being impulsive, harsh, and seemingly impenetrable; she highly social, verbal, accommodating - is wonderful, helping to make all the more powerful when we finally witness what really happens when they are confronted with true intimacy.

A second section is a complete shift that focuses on the years after the Ramsey's have stopped coming to the vacation house. The house, the beach, the ocean, and the lighthouse now are highlighted as major characters. Very cinematically Woolf leads us into the experience of absence, loss, and time passing, with mostly only the memory of people having an impact.

The last section focuses on Mr. Ramsey finally returning to the island with 2 of the children to visit the lighthouse. But fundamentally, this section focuses back on Lily Briscoe, the artist, who is also there visiting and painting. First, a little aside:

Last night I watched the film "Portrait of a Lady on Fire", and it helped me understand this last section of Lighthouse much more than I had. The central character of the "Portrait" is an artist, and the film does an excellent job allowing us to watch an artist visually collect material as she tries to paint the truth on canvas - which then leads to unexpected great personal implications for the artist.

In this final section of Lighthouse, much of the action take place in Lily's (the artist) mind, as she attempts to capture her experience on canvas. What we experience with Lily is how what she is painting is inseparable from her own relationships. Lily's high skills of observation and her desire to capture her experiences at the vacation house drive her to a deeply personal and profound epiphany.

The upshot here is Woolf showing us how the true artist cannot be just a skilled technician but an ongoing distiller of all of life's experiences, no matter how limited the medium being worked with.

...more

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Oct 20, 2017 Jack rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, 2017

The meaning of the title in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse snuck up on me about 30 seconds after a plot twist. It was very well done and for that reason alone, independent of the prose and Woolf's take on the mind, this book has a special place for me. I might even consider it one of the best books I've ever read.

There was nothing about this book that I expected. I was expecting it to be depressing, dense, difficult to read, and a chore. To be honest, I was only reading it because it was on ...more

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Aug 02, 2013 Susan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001-books, ultimate-book-list, 2013-books

Amazing!!

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Sep 29, 2008 Samantha (Nicky's Mom) rated it liked it

Shelves: own-it-read, classics

This was a good book, however, it was a little slow moving. It's really just a story about a family. It was an AP English requirement senior year, so I think the purpose of readinf it was mainly to get some insight into the way life was at the time. It was a little slow for my taste, but still a good book. ...more

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Nov 10, 2016 Tanya rated it liked it

Shelves: list-1001-btrbyd, format-audiobook, list-1001-btrbyd-2006, list-1001-btrbyd-core, 2016

I enjoyed this on audiobook, especially Mrs Ramsey and I thought it was effective heading the characters thoughts intermixed with the dialog. This was a 3.5 rating as I wanted to keep listening and spend a little more time with the characters.

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