To the Lighthouse

Rating:
Summary: If You Have Any Brain At All, You Must Read This
Review: If you haven't read it already, well...shame on you! There is no way to describe in my measly little words what Woolf accomplished with TTLH. She was a writer of mind-boggling skill and imagination, and this novel is a tremendous stylistic triumph on her part. True, it can be difficult book for some and tends to fly right over the head of many readers (hence, I might suggest, the "boring" reactions) But, if you want a REAL book, one that engages both emotion and intellect, one that will keep your head spinning with the beauty and exactingness of its ideas, this book is for you. A truly incredible accomplishment.

Rating:
Summary: so great!
Review: I am french and I actually study this book . We cannot say that it is boring as It is written in some of the comments,we must undertand the real meaning hidden behind each sentence!! then it's great

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable reading experience.
Review: When I came to the end of To The Lighthouse, I turned it over and started reading it again. Virginia Woolf's prose is breathtaking, and the story she tells is moving and profound. Woolf is not concerned with a linear plot that moves from point A to point B; rather, she is interested in the life of the mind and the (often embattled) relationships between people learning to co-exist with one another. To The Lighthouse contains the realm of human experience from childhood yearnings to marital frustrations to the horrors of war that swiftly obliterate human lives. It's a book to be savored.

Rating:
Summary: Boooooring
Review: This book would have been tolerable had it been more straightforward. Ms. Wolfe goes overboard with her stream of consiousness style. She goes out of her way to not say what needs to be said which is egotistical and makes for a very disappointing book.

Rating:
Summary: The sufferings of women
Review: The most important aspect of this novel is that Mrs Ramsay manages to console and support an ungrateful husband and her children, especially her son who is dependent upon her for reassurance. She suffers greatly at the hands of her selfish husband, a typical white male "intellectual" who will not even recognize the tremendous strain put upon Mrs. Ramsay. He worries about getting to "X" or even "Y", as he believes other philosophers do, without realizing that he is fiddling with his chromosomes in a desperate attempt to reassure himself of his greatness. And all the while the women in the novel must suffer and serve males like this. This is a great novel, a heroic story of women's survival in the face of male cruelty. Mrs. Ramsay

Rating:
Summary: necessary narrative of those times
Review: the internet being mostly ephemeral as opposed to the medium of published novels this review is extemporaneous and lacking. There is a paragraph in "To the Lighthouse" which describes the lord of the manor more clearly than a camera. This paragraph is one sentence long though not one long sentence. The thought, care, sweat and anguish which must have gone into the complete thrill of brushing the character onto paper is mortar and brick to the sentence. It stands as does Virginia Woolf.

Rating:
Summary: Not recommended for pleasure!
Review: This book is boring to the maximum! All the characters seem so distant and practically the only thing we are possibly able to connect with is the damn landscape ! Although , this sort of writing is typical to our conscience: a stream that is never stagnant, it is not comprehensive when put on paper ( unless of course we note our own thoughts) I guess it shows that it is never easy to truly decipher the thoughts and reasonings of one another. Woolf is successful in portraying a character if we seperate each section of each part. when she tries to congregate 14 characters (of which 6 are the most important) she really messes up. My advice is if you have a choice-don't go for it! It just gives you headaches!! Well , for me it did!

Rating:
Summary: An astonishing experience of English family life.
Review: "To The Lighthouse" doesn't tell a story--it allows the reader to experience it through the consciousness of its various characters. Woolf gets inside their heads and writes down what they're thinking from moment to moment, creating an intimacy between reader and character I've experienced with no other writer. The largest portion of the novel concerns a day at the Ramsay's summer house by the sea. Mr. Ramsay, a once-famous philosopher whose reputation is beginning to wane, entertains two or three of his students, while Mrs. Ramsay, the novel's central character, manages her family and the other guests. As Mr. Ramsay devotes his energy to philisophical obscurities, Mrs. Ramsay devotes hers to stroking her husband's ego when he needs it, consoling her youngest son James who wants to go to the lighthouse across the bay, and creating a serene, safe space for her guests. Gradually, a portrait of English family life emerges, and more importantly, an understanding of a woman's place within it--Mrs. Ramsay has essentially sacrificed herself for her family and husband, and has done so willingly. Woolf reveals these flawed but beautiful people to the reader in a work of art that seems less like reading prose than listening to music or experiencing a painting. To the Lighthouse is one of the masterpieces of 20th-century English literature

Rating:
Summary: A Psychological Microcosm
Review: Virginia Woolf's TO THE LIGHTHOUSE represents change, reactions to and the emotional turmoil it causes within the family, and when interpreted archetypally, it also tells the tale of human nature in environments that appear immutable but in reality are as ever changing as the ephemeral nature of the human soul.

Rating:
Summary: Here and now
Review: So here we have Mrs Woolf masterpiece, her great achievement at grasping time. This is a book for those that like a challenge in reading. It is not passive reading, Virginia needs your whole attention throughout the novel, and if you are lucky and get inside you will hace a wonderfull experience, you will be there with her and the characters, reading with a dim light, saling towards the lighthouse, painting, the air will brush your face and you will smell salt and sea and be dizzy after lunch. I do not Know if what she tells really interested me because it was jus something you experiment. Good chance