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A review by selenajournal
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
5.0
To the Lighthouse is one of the best books I’ve ever come across. I can’t truly verbalize why it is that I’m enamored with the text, its characters and its meaning (as it relates to my experience with it). Everything from the references to Tennyson and Hume to the painting which is an integral part of the story (if not its physical form) made perfect sense to me and made me feel like I needed to always be reading this story.
Having previously read and admired Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and being almost through with Woolf’s Orlando, I cannot for the life of me understand why someone has not urged and pushed me to read this book sooner (her other novels, though beyond beautiful, seem to somehow pale in comparison). Very quickly this book has become a favourite.
If I could have, I would have made the novel one large excerpt. Instead, here are some other favourites.
She was silent always. She knew then - she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained - falsely perhaps. (32)
He shivered; he quivered. All his vanity, all his satisfaction in his own splendour, riding fell as a thunderbolt, fierce as a hawk at the head of his men through the valley of death, volleyed and thundered - straight into Lily Briscoe and William Bankes. He quivered; he shivered. (34)
If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climbed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. (43)
Directly one looked up and saw them, what she called 'being in love' flooded them. They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach. (53)
For no one attracted her more; his hands were beautiful to her and his feet, and his voice, and his words, and his haste, and his temper, and his oddity, and his passion, and his saying straight out before every one, we perish, each alone, and his remoteness. (193)
She gazed back over the sea, at the island. But the leaf was losing its sharpness. It was very small; it was very distant. The sea was more important now than the shore. Waves were all round them, tossing and sinking, with a log wallowing down one wave; a gull riding on another. About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she murmured, dreamily, half asleep, how we perished, each alone. (217)
Having previously read and admired Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and being almost through with Woolf’s Orlando, I cannot for the life of me understand why someone has not urged and pushed me to read this book sooner (her other novels, though beyond beautiful, seem to somehow pale in comparison). Very quickly this book has become a favourite.
If I could have, I would have made the novel one large excerpt. Instead, here are some other favourites.
She was silent always. She knew then - she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained - falsely perhaps. (32)
He shivered; he quivered. All his vanity, all his satisfaction in his own splendour, riding fell as a thunderbolt, fierce as a hawk at the head of his men through the valley of death, volleyed and thundered - straight into Lily Briscoe and William Bankes. He quivered; he shivered. (34)
If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climbed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. (43)
Directly one looked up and saw them, what she called 'being in love' flooded them. They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach. (53)
For no one attracted her more; his hands were beautiful to her and his feet, and his voice, and his words, and his haste, and his temper, and his oddity, and his passion, and his saying straight out before every one, we perish, each alone, and his remoteness. (193)
She gazed back over the sea, at the island. But the leaf was losing its sharpness. It was very small; it was very distant. The sea was more important now than the shore. Waves were all round them, tossing and sinking, with a log wallowing down one wave; a gull riding on another. About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she murmured, dreamily, half asleep, how we perished, each alone. (217)