Rating: 
Summary: Is this why she committed suicide?
Review: Although at times I consider myself intelligent, after reading "The Waves," I must now concede to being mediocre in my intellect. Upon finishing the novel, I consulted various criticisms and opinions on the work to find that I missed much of what was portrayed in the book. Therefore, I admit to being ignorant. However, I still believe everyone's response to a work is valuable and this is mine:
Just like many other works by Virginia Woolf, there were moments when I was absolutely swept away by the depth of her narrative and the poignancy of her descriptions. Put simply, she blows my mind and this is why I continue to read her. However, I often wonder if the subconscious mind babble that we encounter everyday is worth repeating. Perhaps there is a reason why we have public presentations and filter out much of what we typically are thinking. Therefore, my response to this novel is undecided. Upon finishing the novel, renditions of Shakespeare's "To be or not to be?" ran through my head. I find Woolf's characters and their ambiguous identities and feelings to be confusing and I feel frustrated by their inability to provide me with an answer to the great questions of life. Of course, I realize that life is supposedly more about the questions than the answers and if the goal of good writing it to provoke conversation and thought, Virginia Woolf certainly has done that here. If the purpose of reading is to somehow see ourselves and our struggles reflected in someone else's writing, then Woolf has accomplished that much. Nevertheless, I found the novel to be frustrating in that Woolf provides very little direction or resolution for the reader. I felt as if I was left hanging in so many ways.
Final verdict (after my convoluted and likewise ambiguous review):
It is certainly worth reading for those moments that resonate with the soul, but don't be surprised if it shakes you up, tosses you around, and then leaves you feeling more bewildered than ever before.
And I still wonder what caused her to kill herself. I wish I had that answer.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Incredible
Review: Expertly read by Frances Jeater and superbly enhanced with classical music, The Waves is the succinctly abridged and highly recommended CD audiobook rendition of Virginia Woolf's classic accounting of six friends, ranging from childhood to old age. Enduring monologues are presented with the rhythm and impact of poetry to showcase a complex work of literature that runs the gamut of the difficulties and enduring loyalties of the human experience. 4 digitally mastered CDs, 5 hours 14 minutes.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Incredible
Review: In my opinion, The Waves is the best English Novel ever written. Through this novel, Woolf solves one of the main problems of modern writing -- the problem of subjectivity, namely, how can we connect with other people in a real way, if we are limited by our own conscious experience. In the Waves, Woolf helps us transcend our own consciousness, helps us break down the divisions between ourselves and the rest of the world through her use of language.In The Waves, Woolf does not merely drop us into the consciousness of her characters. For example, the language at the beginning of the novel describing the very first sensory experiences of each of her characters, is too complex for a new born infant. Instead, Woolf uses sophisticated language to place the reader in the same mindset as each character, and in doing so the reader comes to have direct experience of another person outside of themselves. Every sentence in this book describes something real and true about the world. She puts voice to experience that I didn't know that I had. She communicates the very hardness of communicating and she does it beautifully. This book changed my whole life. The Waves is definitely a challenging read, but well worth it. I believe that anyone can enjoy this book if they are willing to put in the effort. Read it -- you will thank yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Existence through the eye of eternity
Review: In this somewhat puzzling novel the sun rises and it sets, six people grow together from infant children to old age, and the waves crash endlessly upon the shore. That is about as close as you will get to a plot in this book. Everything else that happens, school, marriage, even death, seem to be nothing more than passing intensities amid the overbearing silence that is the roar of existence. I picked up this book after reading Mrs Dalloway. I loved Dalloway. It was the first Woolf book I had read and it blew me away. In comparison, reading The Waves was like taking a sandblaster to my eyeballs. She uses stream of consciousness as a medium to delve as deep as she possibly can into the intricacy of existence. Not much happens on a specific and literal level outside of the rising of the sun, but the endless poetry pouring forth from the perceptive cores (I'd say "minds" but I think it goes a bit beyond even that) of these six characters speaks volumes on the fearsome intensity of beauty, the vast complexity of sadness, and the endless endless isolation of the human soul. It is at times so deep and so personal that I felt more than a bit uncomfortable reading it. The effort is well worth it however. Woolf more than any other author I have read, struggles to communicate the hidden message contained in all stories and books... A message forever clouded in meanings and phrases... Lost in its own words.
Rating: 
Summary: Drama-mean
Review: Literary arrogance at its height, this book takes simple concepts and makes them obtuse. If that is an accomplishment, then I'll grant the praise. I would prefer some of her contemporaries like Waugh or Cathers who's prose gives me far more pleasure without the hubris - and in the end teaches me far more about life, and writing. Don't be intimidated by pedants who call this great, trust your own judgement and the emperor's clothes reveal themselves for what they aren't.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book - But Only for Students of Literature
Review: One peculiar quality of many of Woolf's novels is the fact that they are more fun to talk about - afterwards - than they are to actually read, probably because the author had very peculiar ideas about what she wanted her novels to do. Because Woolf was always pushing the envelope of what a novel was, many of her books are very difficult to read. The Waves is probably the most difficult read this reviewer (and student of literature) has ever encountered. The lives of six friends are presented from childhood in a series of interior monologues. There's a glacial slowness that challenges our yen for action, and the episodic nature of the book (covering decades) is not really designed to hold our attention. The point of the book is in how its characters perceive themselves and each other, but since we never get "outside" to form an objective opinion, it's difficult to care what's going to happen next. Maybe that's good, because there's only one significant event that transpires during this long novel (a sad death), and if there's even the slightest hint of humor in the book, this reviewer missed it. Other "modern" novelists, such as William Faulkner, propose that each of us has our own unique inner voice, and they try to make their characters' interior monologues reflect these differences. But Woolf implies that these inner voices are all the same, or at least all six of these characters inner voices are all the same, perhaps by virtue of certain similarities in their environment. Or was it merely a shortage of imagination (or, dare one suggest, technique?) on the part of the author? In any case, this reviewer found that the sameness of the six characters' narrative voices tended to overpower the fact that they each had their own individual lives and personalities. Lest one get the wrong impression, this is indeed a beautiful book. Woolf's prose has a sonorous quality that borders on poetry, yet is so exhausting that it's hard to get through more than a few pages at a sitting. The first few dozen pages are especially trying, since we are never formally introduced to the characters, and it takes some time before their personalities are established. Some critics consider The Waves Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, and certainly it is the most extreme example of the interior monologue she ever produced. But because this review is for the general public rather than the literary press, I can not in good conscience recommend this book. Certainly it's a novel you'll either love or hate, and since you're reading reviews of Virginia Woolf novels, there's at least a chance you'll love it, but I'm giving it two stars, since despite its merits, the average man-on-the street won't get through 10 pages of it. Add one star if you are female, since you are likely more interested in the subtleties of human relationships than most men. Add another star if you majored in English at college, and one more if you've done graduate work in English. Satisfied? For the rest of us, Woolf's To the Lighthouse is a warm, delightful novel about art and family and the passage of time that nearly everyone should enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: simply complex, simply put
Review: The Waves is a novel that both defies categorization and full intellectual comprehension. It succeeds in defying the former assertion because it so gracefully and so thoroughly casts the lives of six very human humans in a mosaic of sheer, nearly inexpressible emotions, thoughts, actions and poetry. The novel is a tapestry of whispers, each breath of each individual whirring off the page, soaring, then sinking into the psyche of the reader. I must admit, upon first reading this book I thought it possessed some incomprehensible message that would be lost amid the stylisitic flourishes and heavy narration of Woolf. I was wrong. No grand, incomprehensible intellectual discourse couched in the language of a great novelist here.
This novel is about life: simply put, the progression of life from youth to death. Percival is the central character of the novel, personifying the mystery of colonial India, the grim reservations of his childhood friends regarding his station in the colonial apparatus, and his very existence, defining a Romantic ideal juxtaposed with a very serious, tragic reality under the Raj in India. After Percival's tragic conclusion, Bernard assumes the central narrative voice; he is the poet who will speak for the rest of the more reticent friends as the book moves towards a conclusion.
I will leave the review here, having allowed The Waves to wash over me once again, so simply complex, simply put.
Rating:
Summary: Was Woolf the greatest writer ever?
Review: This is my second attempt to publish a review of this novel at Amazon. My first attempt was rejected because I exceeded Amazon's allowance of twenty quoted words. And that tells you something about what I think about this novel - there are so many great words and expressions that deserve quoting, that - I expect - would stimulate the readers' interest. Having said this, I need to point out that this book is not a great story - but it is fabulous writing, almost poetry. Here is my one quote (so hard to choose): 'And now I ask, "Who am I?' I have been talking of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis. Am I all of them? Am I one and distinct? I do not know. ......' (p222, Penguin Books, 1992) If you think the quotation marks are strangely placed here it is because Woolf uses a very strange voice in this novel - an experimental style - in which all the friends address the reader almost personally but in a way that merges their self in some way. Perhaps for me this was the least successful aspect of the novel - the friends were insufficiently distinct and identifiable - their voices were too similar. But the quote above suggests that perhaps this was deliberate. Other pages that I would have liked to quote are:
p36, p38, p45, p60, p68, p90, p94, p96, p124, p136, p148, p150, p164, p179, p190, p192, p216 (not all of these were in my original review!)
Rating:
Summary: Didn't Like it
Review: Those people who propose that the reader should read The Waves slowly perhaps forget that not all readers can afford to do that, that is, spend an inordinate amount of time wading through Woolf's tangled highly turgid and pretentious prose. Sometimes writing with restraint seems to produce a far more beautiful lyrical effect than grinding out pages of pedantically explored images and ideas. Alas, Woolf's style was alien to this notion; instead it emphasized the kind of intellectual snobbism that almost all academcis bask in.
Before venturing upon The Waves, you should take a moment to peruse the reviews for To The Lighthouse.
Rating:
Summary: Language as Action
Review: With Woolf, as with Proust, it is easy to accuse the writing of being "dull" and lacking action or even plot. But for these authors the language itself IS the action. Nothing happens and yet everything happens. Just as their work tends to shy away from the conventions of the novel, I believe they are to be read just as unconventionally as they were written. Specifically, The Waves reads like the longest prose poem in the history of the language. When read as a "novel" it does indeed become every bit as difficult as a lot of readers say it is. Though Woolf attempts to differentiate between characters as though straining to achieve at least the skeletal image of the "novel," she does this only superficially by drifting from one name to another. The unwavering language maintains precisely the same tone and intensity throughout, and the focus of Woolf's lucid inquiry never drifts far from its central themes. The book is a series of dramatic monologues that blend indistinguishably into one another. Woolf was preoccupied here with mortality, transience, loneliness and the meaning of friendship, not with telling a story (though a story does get told in the process). As a poem, though, it reads like a great lost chapter of the Bible; a curious, explosive and inward lexicon of the human experience so sacred in its expression as to be humanly impossible. "All mists curl off the roof of my being," Woolf muses in one of the book's most gorgeous lines. It is a perfect description of the alert reader's response: an exuberance bordering on epiphany. If Dickinson is right and the great poem makes one feel as though the top of one's head has been sawn off, then The Waves is a great poem. There have been many great writers, but few who approach the eloquent desperation of this text.
|
