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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
Oh how I adore this book…or at least it’s first part. There is just so much wonder and poetry in this. There’s virtually no point. But I have been drawn in over and over by the authors exploration of family, love, companionship, tradition, learning, gender norms, etc. all through Mr and mrs Ramsey. It’s just so moving and lovely every time they’re on the page. There’s nothing of consequence except an undying affection for the poetry of their relationship.
The book dies off a bit in the second half exploring different things and characters though there’s some amazing gems there too.
The writing is just so poetic. It can be tedious at times, but I never found this too much like others of the author’s works or other stream of consciousness content.
The book dies off a bit in the second half exploring different things and characters though there’s some amazing gems there too.
The writing is just so poetic. It can be tedious at times, but I never found this too much like others of the author’s works or other stream of consciousness content.
More of an experience than a novel. Thought-provoking, a good one to revisit later in life I think.
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
emotional
reflective
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:
Yes
emotional
inspiring
reflective
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:
Yes
Wonderfully written and a great intro to Woolf. Experimental in narrative.
So. Many. Commas. And paragraph-long sentences. I am either too old or too young to appreciate all of the Important Thoughts in this novel. And they are there, absolutely. Maybe reading it in a discussion group would help. But for me, "listening" to angsty, existential internal monologues while the character simultaneously asked someone to pass the salt or turned a page in a book...it got to be too much. Maybe I will re-read it in my next decade to see if it resonates more.
Eudora Welty introduction :
on the setting : inspired by Saint Ives in Cornwall
"« The physical surround, so continuously before us in its changes, its weathers, its procession of day and night, so seducing in its beauty, is not here as itself. What Virginia Woolf has us see is the world as apparent to them—to Mrs. Ramsay, to Lily Briscoe, to James, Andrew, and the rest of the characters. »
« The interior of its characters’ lives is where we experience everything. And in the subjective—contrary to what so many authors find there—lies its clarity. There is nowhere in this radiant novel a shadow of detachment. Such is Virginia Woolf’s genius. The business of living goes on—stockings are knit, the Boeuf en Daube is cooked and served—and she is a genius with the homely, piercingly precise detail too. But if there is a pull and lure and threat from the outside world, other threats, other lures, are greater: those that search the characters more fatally, from within.
Here, with this houseful of family and summer guests, on these few miles of shore and sea, with Lighthouse, life has been intensified, not constricted, not lessened in range but given its expansion. Inside, in this novel’s multiple, time-affected view, is ever more boundless and more mysterious than Outside. »
« Love had a thousand shapes.” Love indeed pervades the whole novel. If reality is what looms, love is what pervades—so much so that it is quite rarely present in the specific; it is both everywhere and nowhere at a given time. »
« Set down here in the surround of the sea, on the spinning earth, caught up in the mysteries and the threat of time, the characters in their separate ways are absorbed in the wresting of order and sequence out of chaos, of shape out of what shifts and changes or vanishes before their eyes. The act of thinking, the act of using a brush dipped in greens and blues to set down “what I see” on a square of paper, the giving of human love, of making the moment something permanent, are all responses made at great risk (“risk” is the novel’s repeated word) to the same question, “What does it all mean? »
on the setting : inspired by Saint Ives in Cornwall
"« The physical surround, so continuously before us in its changes, its weathers, its procession of day and night, so seducing in its beauty, is not here as itself. What Virginia Woolf has us see is the world as apparent to them—to Mrs. Ramsay, to Lily Briscoe, to James, Andrew, and the rest of the characters. »
« The interior of its characters’ lives is where we experience everything. And in the subjective—contrary to what so many authors find there—lies its clarity. There is nowhere in this radiant novel a shadow of detachment. Such is Virginia Woolf’s genius. The business of living goes on—stockings are knit, the Boeuf en Daube is cooked and served—and she is a genius with the homely, piercingly precise detail too. But if there is a pull and lure and threat from the outside world, other threats, other lures, are greater: those that search the characters more fatally, from within.
Here, with this houseful of family and summer guests, on these few miles of shore and sea, with Lighthouse, life has been intensified, not constricted, not lessened in range but given its expansion. Inside, in this novel’s multiple, time-affected view, is ever more boundless and more mysterious than Outside. »
« Love had a thousand shapes.” Love indeed pervades the whole novel. If reality is what looms, love is what pervades—so much so that it is quite rarely present in the specific; it is both everywhere and nowhere at a given time. »
« Set down here in the surround of the sea, on the spinning earth, caught up in the mysteries and the threat of time, the characters in their separate ways are absorbed in the wresting of order and sequence out of chaos, of shape out of what shifts and changes or vanishes before their eyes. The act of thinking, the act of using a brush dipped in greens and blues to set down “what I see” on a square of paper, the giving of human love, of making the moment something permanent, are all responses made at great risk (“risk” is the novel’s repeated word) to the same question, “What does it all mean? »
dark
emotional
inspiring
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A swirling masterpiece
This is the second work of Virginia Woolf that I have read, having read Mrs. Dalloway. I think I might have enjoyed this one more than Dalloway. The stream of consciousness narrative is fluid and airy as its setting on the Scottish seaside. This is a short novel but it should not be read quickly as one must keep track of the thoughts of each character. To the Lighthouse rewards the patient reader with beautiful writing, profound sentiment, and a narrative that weaves through both fleeting instances of the human consciousness and the unforgiving forward march of time.