Drowning in 'The Waves'

[Joe]

Hi all! I have been reading The Waves recently and am about..hmm maybe half way through?? And have found it a unique but fairly difficult book in parts, brilliant in others. I read Mrs Dalloway and really enjoyed it, so am persevering through, but just wondered what other people thought of it? Not many people at school actually know who Woolf is so it's pretty tough to talk about what the bloody hell is going on!

[Namida...]

hi i'm new to this group but couldn't find somewhere to introduce myself! i adore The Waves,though i don't know why it is given less credit than Mrs Dalloway or To the Lighthouse, it was brilliant. it took 2 months i think to read but by the end i was so touched, i sobbed so hard that i had to put down the book to compose myself. i'm usually not that much of a crybaby, but this book is just unbelievable, or perhaps given at the wrong time! it is difficult, i have to say, and i plan to reread it again when i get older.
i hope you like it and when you finish let me know so that we can talk about it fully ^^

[Wouter]

The Waves is my favourite Virginia Woolf novel, but also the toughest. I actually pencilled down the names of the characters in the margin just to keep track who is saying what.

The Wavesis about the Moment of Being, or the perception of the individual. The difficulty lies in the fact that you have to keep switching angles when you move to a different character.

The Waves really needs time and effort to get the hang of the general storyline (although I think that general storyline isn't the most important thing of the novel). However, I found it much more enjoyable than, for example, Ulysses by fellow Modernist writer James Joyce. True, Ulysses is denser than The Waves, but The Waves really gets into the moment of being, the perception of the individual.