A review by purplemind
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

After years on my "to read" list, and a few months on my "to read" shelf, I finally got round to this book, and to Virginia Woolf in general.

I tend to enjoy dialogue over monologue so, going into it, I fully expected to find this book a bit of a drag for my tastes; I guess, in some places, it nearly was, but never quite got there. The writing is just too damn good. Woolf tricks you into thinking you're only following the barely linear, often repetitive thoughts of kind of boring, painfully ordinary people and then, just like that, she slaps you in the face with stuff like: 

"[...] distant views seem to outlast by a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest. 

or

"[...] and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others." 

(or the entirety of the "Time Passes" chapter, which I will not disclose because spoilers, but <i> man </i>.)

"To the Lighthouse" definitely isn't an easy book to get through, but it is easier to get through than I imagined it would be. Does that make sense? I think it helps if you keep a summary on hand (I used SparkNotes'), to help you decipher the trickier parts of the book, and to better understand the symbolism/context that might be lost on a contemporary reader.
There are some dated (at least in my opinion) ideas about class and the relationship between the sexes although, at the same time, Woolf challenges some notions that were, at the time, taken as a given (women must marry and they cannot create meaningful art, to name just two), as well as the "traditional" narrative structure of a novel. Very little happens in "To the Lighthouse", and also everything happens in it.

In summary, expect a very experimental, definitely slow, emotionally taxing but extraordinarily beautiful read, if you do decide to give it a go. 
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