To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
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Book Reviews of To the Lighthouse
Book Review: light spaces between us
Summary: 5 Stars
Stream of consciousness prose went in and out of style pretty fast, though some experimenters occasionally make use of it still no one used it to greater effect than Joyce and Woolf. Of course they had the advantage of using the style first and so it was new. In my opinion Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was the best novel ever written in this style, but To the Lighthouse is the second best. Published in 1927 it deals with very large issues but in a very intimate setting. The Ramsay vacation home is visited every summer and every summer change and time itself makes its presence felt in varying ways on each of the consciousnesses that occuppy the house. The center consciousness is Mrs. Ramsay's whose quiet devotion to her family is compared to a freer kind of existence in the form of a female painter. Mrs. Ramsay is a kind of beacon to her family, she provides the safety and comfort that comes with order and ritual. Her husband is the head of the family and the one more connected to worldly awareness and concerns but her less obvious and less defineable role is really the one that allows all to function. But things happen that cannot be controlled. The war breaks the routine that had been established over the years and after the war things are no longer as they were, there is a desolate feel as post war life resumes because things that were once there no longer are. The interior monologues that capture each character in their moments of being support an overall view being that most of life is lived alone and to oneself and forces we cannot control really determine the demeanor of our days, our own decisions are important but in relation to the larger forces shaping them very small things. The books of the twenties are still the best. A quiet book that sends very deep and resonant waves through ones mind and body.Book Review: To The Lighthouse
Summary: 4 Stars
"To The Lighthouse" is a portrait of the Ramsey family; a portrait "taken" as they are vacationing at their summer home on the rugged coast of Scotland. This is a very interior portrait, though, the most interior I've ever stumble upon in any book to date. For me, at least, this book transcends the barrier of time, culture and all else and speaks straight from the soul, something few authors have been able to do. Two things struck me about the experience of reading it. One is that while I cant claim full understanding, I no longer found myself struggling with the form in order to read the book. The second is how much more booming the book became for me now that I'm older and can identify more with Mrs. Ramsey instead of seeing the book only through the character of Lily Briscoe.
To the Lighthouse brings the Ramsey family and the people they bring their wake to their home on the Isle of Skye. Families in the world of this book are little things. The first half creates the Ramsey family group so well that when the second half is without it, the reader is always aware of the ghost images standing in the empty spaces. We found out what has happened to the missing members of the group by a reunion with the ghosts of the past. Meanwhile, lily tries to understand the world shes in and make her painting by meditating about the ramseys and how much has changed in the world around them.
I beleive that Woolfs well known stream technique at its more poetic and influential than anyone else I have read. The boook is very beautiful and sad at the same time. I'll look forward re-reading it again in a couple more years. It's luminous, it's astonsishing, it's prizewinning. It's a book I think high school students should be made to read to really understand life at its fullest.
Book Review: Decipher the cryptic 20's narrative to find the substance
Summary: 2 Stars
I struggled passed the cryptic, abstract narrative to really get to know the characters. I wanted to know their thoughts and feelings and kept hoping that at some point in time a full, rich character development would become clear to me. Although some under-the-surface insights into their psyches were excellent, they were no more earth-shattering than other 20th century literature that I have read. These solid character-defining excerpts that I enjoyed so much were also few and far between, and I felt annoyed that I had to wade through the "filler" to get to the real thing. Even with these excellently written insights, I still never had a powerful image in my mind about the characters, and I did not empathize with any of them. It was a very detached experience.In order to appreciate the book more for what it was I tried to take into consideration the timing of the book. Today our society is very self aware and we are able to articulate what we are thinking and feeling so much more than we did in the 20's. This book was written before Freud and Oprah were household names, and before we had access to TV and other forms of mass media. Perhaps the lack of clarity of the characters was symptomatic of the lack of self-understanding that people (or Virginia Woolf) experienced at that time. I am sure if I read it again and did not filter it through my late 20th century perspective on life, I would find it to be the masterpiece that it is revered to be. But I will not read it again - I would much rather read another book that grabs me the first time.
Overall I am happy that I read it simply to have experienced a novel by Virginia Woolf and check off another book from the New York Times 100 best books of the 20th Century.
Book Review: a perfect masterpeice
Summary: 5 Stars
for a long time, i like many people, were trully afraid of verginia woolf, she is known as a stream of conciousness abscure and anigmatic writer, and since i don't have a litreture masters dgree i thought i would be lost in her writings. but then i saw "the hours" which led to reading "the hours" which led to reading "mrs. dalloway" and there i was - infront of one of the most notourious novels in modern litrature diving into the first page.
it's not an easy book to read, it's very chalanging, and you have to keep stricked consentarion on who's mind you are listening to, but it's one of the most wonderful and magical books i've ever read.
woolf's style jumps fromthe thought of one person to the other, exploring the inner soul, from high speritual notions about art and life, to the most mudmean experience of smelling a flower or taking care of the chidren, and she sees the same magic of life and living in everything. suddenly, as you get more obsorved in the thought of the ramzies, their childrens and guests, you realize so much about your own life and preseption, she makes you fall in love with her charecters, then hate them looking at them through another person's eyes. and more then that - she makes you switch between diffrent prespectives towared your own life.
in a very short volum, verginia woolf manage ot deeply examin complex topics of relationship within the family, classes in england, death, growing up, war, art and philosophy.
ithough deffenetly one of the more complicated books ever written, i have to say that even as a person that doesn't know that much about litrature, i enjoyed it deeply and i think it is a book anyone who loves readding and life in general, should read.
Book Review: Full of paragraphs of absolute brilliance!
Summary: 5 Stars
In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf accomplishes a feat that every writer hopes to accomplish in his/her lifetime: she creates out of the ordinary humdrum of the daily life of an English family of Ramsay's characters and paragraphs that will ever be part of the best of English writing produced in last century. In my opinion, several paragraphs in this novel are like jewels of English prose, that must be prized, possessed and displayed likewise. Woolf settles for a very subtle narrative, though which she presents innermost thoughts of her characters, especially women, and in the brilliance of her words, romance and life are captured like snapshots labelled thoughtfully and carefully!
The book is sort of divided into two parts, separated by decades. What was most intoxicating part of the book was the description of this change, as was the description of the nightfall. Be it secret thoughts of women or their admirers, or the doubts and uncertainities of a professor-father or the feelings of children (in both times separated by more than a decade) or the simple description of nature, Woolf shows a talent that must make her as important to twentieth century literature as Joyce and Lawrence. She is in my opinion one of the finest (if not the finest) female novelist to have ever existed! Maybe my hyperbole is uncalled for, but my admiration stems from the deep admiration of an exquisite piece of creative writing! Like every classic, this one must be savored with slow speed; deep thoughts, few pages at a time and remembered by the beauty of the sentences and emotions they capture or arouse; and not by the turn of events or unfolding of drama, which even though interesting, is incidental to this incredible piece of literature!