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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
I thought the final section on old age and approaching death was the best part of the book. The whole thing grew on me as it progressed. Many passages highlighted.
I tried SO HARD and failed to like this. I thought I was grown up enough for Virginia Woolf now, and this was meant to be here best, but I found nothing to relate to in it. And the language, THE LANGUAGE, so false, so poetic and high-falutin’. To me it sounded like someone just showing off- when if it was written in a more prose like style maybe I could have found something to grab on to, but to me it felt so self-indulgent to bang on in the Keatsy way she did. I have failed!
Woolf is one of the few greats who wrote just enough that I have read everything she's published. She breaks my heart over and over. This is one of her most convoluted books, but probably my favorite.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
Virginia Woolf's writing is utterly beautiful, transcendent in nature but mellow in tone.
What struck me most about The Waves is how throughout its length (and especially towards the end) it seems to be pondering the supposed meaningless of life; yet I find that Woolf's intricate prose and subtle descriptive talents (whether it be on a human or an inanimate object), serve as a strong argument against Woolf's nihilism.
To our proto narrator Bernhard; the repetitions, strangeness and small goings-on that occur daily in our lives cause him to develop a strong sense of disgust and despair at the passage of time. Perhaps it's because I'm not as old or as intelligent as Woolf, but I find all the things that Bernhard laments to instead be praiseworthy.
The Waves made me realise two things: One; that prose writing is its own high-art, and with enough talent it can reside in the same sphere as Michelangelo's paintings, or Rachmaninoff's symphonies.
And two; that perhaps I'm more of an optimist than I thought.
What struck me most about The Waves is how throughout its length (and especially towards the end) it seems to be pondering the supposed meaningless of life; yet I find that Woolf's intricate prose and subtle descriptive talents (whether it be on a human or an inanimate object), serve as a strong argument against Woolf's nihilism.
To our proto narrator Bernhard; the repetitions, strangeness and small goings-on that occur daily in our lives cause him to develop a strong sense of disgust and despair at the passage of time. Perhaps it's because I'm not as old or as intelligent as Woolf, but I find all the things that Bernhard laments to instead be praiseworthy.
The Waves made me realise two things: One; that prose writing is its own high-art, and with enough talent it can reside in the same sphere as Michelangelo's paintings, or Rachmaninoff's symphonies.
And two; that perhaps I'm more of an optimist than I thought.
3.5 stars, rounded up.
"But if one day you do not come after breakfast, if one day I see you in some looking-glass perhaps looking after another, if the telephone buzzes and buzzes in your empty room, I shall then, after unspeakable anguish, I shall then -- for there is no end to the folly of the human heart -- seek another, find another, you. Meanwhile, let us abolish the ticking of time's clock with one blow. Come closer."
"I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealously shoots its green flashes hither and tither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart."
"In a world which contains the present moment, said Neville, why discriminate? Nothing should be named lest by so doing we change it. Let it exist, this bank, this beauty, and I for one instant, steeped in pleasure."
"What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. The wave breaks. I am the foam the sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room."
"I feel as I look from the window, parting the curtains, that would give him no pleasure; but it rejoices me. (We use our friends to measure our own stature)."
"I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs. Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing."
"Now I smell geraniums; I smell earth mould. I dance. I ripple. I am thrown over you like a net of light. I lie quivering flung over you."
"This is our world, lit with crescents and stars of light; and great petals half transparent block the openings like purple windows. Everything is strange. Things are huge and very small. The stalks of flowers are thick as oak trees. Leaves are high as the domes of vast cathedrals. We are giants, lying here, who can make forests quiver."
"We are all callous, unfriended. I will seek out a face, a composed monumental face, and will endow it with omniscience, and wear it under my dress like a talisman and then (I promise this) I will find some dingle in a wood where I can display my assortment of curious treasures. I promise myself this. So I will not cry."
"My body shuts in her face, impertinently, like a parasol. I open my body, I shut my body at my will. Life is beginning, I now break into my hoard of a life."
"But if I find myself in company with other people, words at once make smoke rings -- see how phrases at once begin to wreathe off my lips. It seems that a match is set to a fire; something burns."
"But if one day you do not come after breakfast, if one day I see you in some looking-glass perhaps looking after another, if the telephone buzzes and buzzes in your empty room, I shall then, after unspeakable anguish, I shall then -- for there is no end to the folly of the human heart -- seek another, find another, you. Meanwhile, let us abolish the ticking of time's clock with one blow. Come closer."
"I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealously shoots its green flashes hither and tither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart."
"In a world which contains the present moment, said Neville, why discriminate? Nothing should be named lest by so doing we change it. Let it exist, this bank, this beauty, and I for one instant, steeped in pleasure."
"What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. The wave breaks. I am the foam the sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room."
"I feel as I look from the window, parting the curtains, that would give him no pleasure; but it rejoices me. (We use our friends to measure our own stature)."
"I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs. Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing."
"Now I smell geraniums; I smell earth mould. I dance. I ripple. I am thrown over you like a net of light. I lie quivering flung over you."
"This is our world, lit with crescents and stars of light; and great petals half transparent block the openings like purple windows. Everything is strange. Things are huge and very small. The stalks of flowers are thick as oak trees. Leaves are high as the domes of vast cathedrals. We are giants, lying here, who can make forests quiver."
"We are all callous, unfriended. I will seek out a face, a composed monumental face, and will endow it with omniscience, and wear it under my dress like a talisman and then (I promise this) I will find some dingle in a wood where I can display my assortment of curious treasures. I promise myself this. So I will not cry."
"My body shuts in her face, impertinently, like a parasol. I open my body, I shut my body at my will. Life is beginning, I now break into my hoard of a life."
"But if I find myself in company with other people, words at once make smoke rings -- see how phrases at once begin to wreathe off my lips. It seems that a match is set to a fire; something burns."
She has found me. I am struck on the nape of the neck. She has kissed me. All is shattered.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship
Minor: Death, Suicide