To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
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Book Reviews of To the Lighthouse
Book Review: Take your time -- but make the time
Summary: 4 Stars
I've discovered a little secret to reading Virginia Woolf -- it takes time.It is practically impossible to read this book in little ten-minute spots, while watching television or babysitting. Don't try it; you'll end up not liking it.
It needs your time. Give it an hour with no interruptions. Get a bag of pistachios and read. Unplug the phone, turn off the TV. Read and don't stop. Then you'll discover the joy of Virginia Woolf -- for while her prose is tough, it is haunting, beautiful, and real.
Once you've settled into it, you'll discover a wonderful book, a tale of everyday life lived. Both intensely personal and incredibly universal, this book is life itself.
So, you want the real review. Alright, it's the story of a beach house, where reside the Ramseys and their various friends. Mrs. Ramsey is a goddess and nearly everyone worships her. This is more fun to read than it sounds. Lily Briscoe is a painter trying to figure out what she sees and what she loves.
There is a brutal twist in the middle, and the rest of the book is coping with that. No, I won't tell you what it is. Go read the book. It's great.
It's about beauty, about the incredible tragedy of time passing, about art and the world, about love and marriage, about people. It's not only a book about life, it is a book of life itself.
So maybe it's not written for our 30 second commercial, read at the bus stop age.
Book Review: A good book makes you want to write, to see how language ser
Summary: 5 Stars
Art of such consequence as this makes demands on its audience, but the return is colossal. This is an extraordinary book. It is at least as much poem as tale, as much music as prose. It will certainly change your idea about limitations of expression. For readers who require signposts of plot to trigger their perception of information, and who don't find it easy to appreciate the subtle flavours of words, be warned: you will need to depend very heavily on your inner ear, to allow some of the more exquisite sensations of language to wash in of their own accord. (Other reviewers have hinted here at the role of reading skills in our understanding.) It is possible though, by such openess, to develop a reliable method of perceiving and pulling ideas which is not at all the way we are so used to guzzling and then spitting them out, in our late 20th century consumerist addiction to news media sensation. A good book makes you want to write and speak, to learn how language will work for you. Woolf gently turns the relationship between events in time and the play of human feeling on its head in the search for universal truth. I read it the first go in two or three bites because it's flavours are so rich and I did not want to miss anything by failing to savour them properly. I'll always revisit it to learn and feel more and to be enriched further. This is not an Oprah book.Book Review: A good book makes you want to write and speak.
Summary: 5 Stars
Art of such consequence as this makes demands on its audience, but the return is colossal. This is an extraordinary book. It is at least as much poem as tale, as much music as prose. It will certainly change your idea about limitations of expression. For readers who require signposts of plot to trigger their perception of information, and who don't find it easy to appreciate the subtle flavours of words, be warned: you will need to depend very heavily on your inner ear, to allow some of the more exquisite sensations of language to wash in of their own accord. (Other reviewers have hinted here at the role of reading skills in our understanding.) It is possible though, by such openess, to develop a reliable method of perceiving and pulling ideas which is not at all the way we are so used to guzzling and then spitting them out, in our late 20th century consumerist addiction to news media sensation. A good book makes you want to write and speak, to learn how language can serve you. Woolf gently turns the relationship between events in time and the play of human feeling on its head in the search for universal truth. I read it the first go in two or three bites because it's flavours are so rich and I did not want to miss anything by failing to savour them properly. I'll always revisit it to learn and feel more and to be enriched further. This is not an Oprah book.Book Review: Possibly Virginia Woolf's Best
Summary: 5 Stars
The Freudian take regarding To the Lighthouse has been almost beaten to death. I think that anyone who focuses too much on the phallic symbolism of the Lighthouse itself in this work does so to their own detriment. Why? Because To the Lighthouse could perhaps be Virginia Woolf's most finely crafted work. If one were to look too deeply into the symbolism they may miss the beautifully painted character portrait of Mrs. Ramsey as the stolid maternal who really holds the family, household, and social interactions of her husband together while he goes about dreaming and philosophizing, only to have to pick the pieces up later when she dies and he is left alone.
To the Lighthouse is filled with wonderful and memorable characters. Not just Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, but also Lila Briscoe the aritst, and Minta Doyle the carefree young almost self absorbed girl in a woman's body. Then there is Mr. Carmichael who appears kind of an old wizened sage who remains somewhat aloof but finally finds success as a poet at the end of the novel. There's Tansley the anti-social atheist intellectual who may still have a softer side somewhere beneath his cold exterior...the list goes on and on...and by now I'm probably rambling, but anyway, To the Lighthouse is Virgina's Woolf best and everyone who reads it should be able to find something they can appreciate about it.
Book Review: Still very, very good
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not sure I'm supposed to do this but I'll anyway. This is the third time through this novel for me and after I finished my second reading, I posted my comments here (scroll down some). This reading, I was impressed by the relationship between the Ramsey's. Mr. Ramsey lives in the world of thought, rationality and verbal sword-play. But Mrs. Ramsey lives in the world of the heart; she is a nurturer, the caregiver, very intelligent, but not caught up in the territorial boundary lines that the men fight over with words. Yet Mr. Ramsey, and William Bankes, and Charles Tansley, they all find her beautiful, they admire her immensely. What strikes me is this: Mrs. Ramsey's beauty is an inner beauty of action, peace, harmony, and balance in her world. She brooks no false illusions about her place in the cosmos, she isn't vain, she's thoughtful and diligent. The men rely on her for this quality that they do not have in their own lives.
In my last reveiw here, I thought this novel might fit into the emotional genre of fiction. Now I'm thinking that it might be the kind of literature used in marriage counselling.
So, this is a novel that you can pick up and find something new in the reading. I need to let some time pass, but I'll tell you what I think on my next reading, too.