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To the Lighthouse (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics S.) |
List Price: $16.95
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Rating: Summary: was Virginia Woolf the greatest WRITER ever.... Review: ..... but perhaps not the greatest story teller?
This book is one of the hardest I've tried to rate. The ending with its multiple perspectives - those on the boat, and those on the shore - is wonderful, and with just the right mix of the visionary. It's almost a ghost story, but nothing like any other ghost story I've read.
No matter where I picked the book up, and took up reading again, I was fascinated. I could feel the holiday the characters were experiencing as if I was there at the seaside even though I have only had one short holiday in Britain. But, then, I suspect that family life and the desultory holiday experience was very similar here in Australia. I don't really mean desultory, but the routine holiday venue with its hours of no-work, no-school often had a strange feeling of tedium mixed with the 'excitement' of something different from routine. Unfortunately, reading this book also resurrected the feeling in me - the book too well records the feeling - and I quickly found myself drifting off into my own private world and not regarding the words as well as I should - only to be fascinated again as my attention snapped back.
The book is wonderful for its multiple perspectives. Here is an example of a change of view mid-paragraph (this sort of thing often had me re-reading as my attenton drifted).
"What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if Lily thought (he sat opposite her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals. Everything about him had that meagre fixity, that bare unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes: they were blue, deep set, frightening."
The stream-of-consciousness writing style used by Woolf as closely as anything I have experienced imitates the greatest attribute of fine music - counterpoint - the ability of the mind to track and appreciate many strands of experience at the one time, to flick back and forth between many voices. With music you can listen to the same work many times and explore the multiple voices in different ways each time without compromising your appreciation of the whole. I suspect you could do this with several readings of 'To the Lighthouse' too. Unfortunately it takes a greater commitment to re-read a book than it does to, say, listen again to a Mozart symphony.
Woolf does have a great ending to this novel - a really memorable mood piece. Unfortunately, to extend the musical analogy, I found her melodies not strong enough, the development of ideas at times pedestrian (detail got in the way), the orchestration inadquate and the harmony not strong enough (although there is one very strong moment in the novel).
Rating: Summary: Life Stand Still Here... Review: Each sentence in To the Lighthouse is so alive that, like toys at night in a haunted room, they wake up, change into strange things and go still again. The illusion is part due to its layering and weave - dense as poetry, light as air, not a word accidental. And part due to the structure of the novel, its great invisible solidity fixed under imagery and detail moving over it like transparent veils. Its parts are elemental: water, air, sunlight, seaweed - frilled strips pinned to the attic walls, or later trailing around Cam's fingers in the water when the sails fill. Part of the pleasure in reading To the Lighthouse is the revelation of its interlocking structure, how the macro-structure of the novel is reflected everywhere on the micro-scale. An example: the three sections of the novel and their pace are seen again in the trajectory of the sailboat across the bay in the final section, where the wind takes it, then dies down, then moves again.
The passages describing Lily Briscoe at work on her paintings seem to reflect a kind of rapture in which Woolf must have written this novel: "...with all her faculties in a trance, frozen over superficially but moving underneath with extreme speed." "It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to tears..." And "She was not inventing; she was only trying to smooth out something she had been given years ago folded up; something she had seen." But some of them describe the novel itself, which has all the feel of a ghost story: "It was to be a thing you could ruffle with your breath; and a thing you could not dislodge with a team of horses."
In fact, much of the novel - like the light and dark of the lighthouse beacon, or waves crashing in and back out - works in a balanced opposition: Crowdedness and the lack of privacy juxtaposed against the condition of utter aloneness. The bond between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay counterbalanced with their awareness of what they've cost one another. The collusion of the children, their secretiveness and wildness, but then their docility and vulnerability. Trapped thoughts that can't be told, but are then understood without saying, as the same reflection - like quantum tunneling - might wind from one point of view to the mind of a different character.
In part II the sound of bombs falling in the distance is described as "the measured blows of hammers on felt." There are lines like that, which come in so lightly, but their impact on landing is powerful: the novel itself explodes in your heart like a silent H-bomb. One example is the last line in paragraph #3 in chapter XII of part 3, which I won't give away. (And don't sneak ahead: it won't mean anything unless you've arrived there in the right order!) And this one about James, belonging as he does to the unspecified "great clan" mentioned on page one: "He was so pleased that he was not going to let anyone share a grain of his pleasure. His father had praised him. They must think that he was perfectly indifferent. But you've got it now, Cam thought." Many of the details in To the Lighthouse you might not even notice on first read, but when you go back they surprise you. This is part of the secret of the novel's geode-like quality, where you never guess what's contained inside it until you've seen the whole thing and it opens for you, then you see it. Another Amazon reviewer was right in saying this: you have to read it twice.
Although a short novel, To the Lighthouse contains so many themes: vision and seeing, nature at odds with human life, time and its nonlinear movement, community and individual isolation. It's about what Mr. Ramsay knew: how "...our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness" and what James knew: "That loneliness which for both of them was the truth about things." It's about things you want, and do or do not get: whether you want to go to the lighthouse, or whether you don't want to go; whether anyone will get to Sorley, the lighthouse keeper, with tobacco and newspapers, or whether he'll remain isolated out there; whether Lily will capture what she sees on her canvas; whether Paul Rayley will find Minta's lost brooch. What Mrs. Ramsay wished for was the impossible. It was guessed by Lily Briscoe: "Life stand still here."
Rating: Summary: a perfect masterpeice Review: for a long time, i like many people, were trully afraid of verginia woolf, she is known as a stream of conciousness abscure and anigmatic writer, and since i don't have a litreture masters dgree i thought i would be lost in her writings. but then i saw "the hours" which led to reading "the hours" which led to reading "mrs. dalloway" and there i was - infront of one of the most notourious novels in modern litrature diving into the first page.
it's not an easy book to read, it's very chalanging, and you have to keep stricked consentarion on who's mind you are listening to, but it's one of the most wonderful and magical books i've ever read.
woolf's style jumps fromthe thought of one person to the other, exploring the inner soul, from high speritual notions about art and life, to the most mudmean experience of smelling a flower or taking care of the chidren, and she sees the same magic of life and living in everything. suddenly, as you get more obsorved in the thought of the ramzies, their childrens and guests, you realize so much about your own life and preseption, she makes you fall in love with her charecters, then hate them looking at them through another person's eyes. and more then that - she makes you switch between diffrent prespectives towared your own life.
in a very short volum, verginia woolf manage ot deeply examin complex topics of relationship within the family, classes in england, death, growing up, war, art and philosophy.
ithough deffenetly one of the more complicated books ever written, i have to say that even as a person that doesn't know that much about litrature, i enjoyed it deeply and i think it is a book anyone who loves readding and life in general, should read.
Rating: Summary: Never again... Review: I won't read another book by this author.
Without sounding pretentious, I should say I have a PhD
in literature (Spanish)and I have read a lot of books
and Virginia Woolf's "To the lighthouse" is quite possibly
the worst piece of fiction I've ever read.
While I admit that there are moments of interesting prose, overall the book is a vague, ambiguous, meaningless collection of words.
Rating: Summary: Stylish Nonsense Review: Just how do you write a "stream of conscious novel?" It takes loads of talent to form words together precisely how one might think. I first encountered this style reading James Joyce's "A Portrait of and Artist as a Young Man," and later was amazed to see it perfected by William Faulkner in "The Sound and the Fury" I have to admit, this style of writing was starting to grow on me......that is until I read Woolfe's version of stream of conscious in "To the Lighthouse" which in my opinion is a failure of epic proportions. What makes it an even greater failure is the fact that some people consider this one of the greatest books ever written. To speak the honest truth, I can't remember I time when I have not enjoyed reading a book, as much as I didn't enjoy reading this one.
According to "expert" analysis, To the Lighthouse is supposed to use a mixture of symbolism in random thinking to show a portrait of characters that are searching for the meaning of life. The actual Lighthouse is a different symbol to each individual character. To the Lighthouse is also supposedly a dead on accurate view of gender roles and differences between men and women, and every character represents a different piece of this gender puzzle. I have read what the "experts" say, but I will let you be the judge.
The novel does have an original way of telling its story. It drifts from character to character without ever telling us when, and lets us know the thoughts they are thinking. These vague thoughts tell a story as they are strung along. I wish I could explain the plot, but there really isn't one. The story opens at the Ramsey's vacation home where we learn mainly about Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, and their assortment of guests. Guests like the painter, Lily, and the sexist Charles, and the dignified Mr. Banks. The first half of the story brings us in and out of their minds. Your mind will wander more than the writing style as you desperately try to grasp what the hell is going on, and wondering if anybody really thinks like this in real life. The thoughts of these characters are borderline absurd, and the most amazing aspect of all is that by the end of the novel I didn't know a single thing more about these characters than I did when it started. All I know is the nonsense, abstract thoughts they think. I don't know a thing about their beliefs or character.
The only one I felt I knew a thing about was Mr. Ramsey. He wants others praise, and his son James wants to kill him. What else? Lily likes to paint....and Mrs. Ramsey likes to go to the market. Oh, and at the end of the story Mr. Ramsey finally takes his son to the lighthouse, which never happened in part one. Oh, we also learn that a few of the Ramsey's have died, in the "Time passes" sequence. Not that we care, we didn't know any of them anyway. Is this review helpful to you? Does it make sense? Probably not, but neither does a word of this novel.
This is without a doubt, the worst classic I have ever read. Even with all the explanations. I really want to meet the person who got something out of this mess and try to understand why in the world anyone would think it was great. I don't get it. I love stream of conscious books, but this one is a failure on a colossal scale.
If you like books about nothing, characters that are lifeless, books without plot, which are all about style and have no substance, than I think this might be the book for you. I wish I could tell you more of what it was about, but it really isn't about anything. I can picture a conversation I might have later in life about this novel and I think it might go something like this:
"So, did you ever read that book called To the Lighthouse?"
"I think so, I can't really recall." (Myself)
"What was it about?"
"You know, I don't really know, I don't think it was about anything really." (Myself)
It has been a day, and already these words ring true. This book will be forgotten faster than my dinner I am eating at the moment is digested.
Grade: D+
Rating: Summary: Good for discussion about the structure of thought and time Review: This is a more demanding read, really a literary event when it came out in the 1920s. It's about a British family on vacation and the family stresses and tension that arise. The narrative moves about with a shifting perspective, making it excellent for book clubs that want to push it. Good for discussion about the structure of thought and time.
Rating: Summary: a dazzling experiment in form Review: Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" is an underappreciated masterpiece. Often overshadowed by "Mrs. Dalloway" (which certainly deserves its repute), "To the Lighthouse" stands on its own as a great classic. It chronicles the lives of the Ramsay family and some friends, examining human relationships and emotions with great insight. The characters are elegant and well developed, the writing is lovely, and the form is daring and innovative. "To the Lighthouse" is a rare kind of book that can change the way you read characters.
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