Customer Reviews:
 Here and now June 22, 2004
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
WARNING: June 15, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is not for people who need lots of explicit flash-bang style action. Or for people who think they want deep concepts, but only if they are clearly spelled out so that the reader doesn't have to work to hard. There is no sex, but there is pleanty of romance, there is no killing, but there is death (on many levels). It is a book that deals with the inner workings of the mind and Virgina Woolf gives us a glimpse into some thoughts that come from people who are honest. Perhaps the best example of this is when Mrs. Ramsey, one of the main characters, struggles inwardly with her motivations and asks herself honestly why she helps people. She comes the remarkable conclusion that she helps people so that others will look at her and think about what a wonderful person she is. That may not seem so profound, but very few of us are able to be that honest with ourselves.It is difficult to get through, so if you want a candy book go read Tom Clancy. Her points are subtle but honest. She says more about human nature in her 200 pages than any other author I've read. I wouldn't classify myself as an intellectual, but this is still one of my all time favorite books.
A work of genius which I HATED May 2, 2004
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Look, I hated this book. I hated reading it. I hate all stream of consciousness writing, or very nearly all. I hate what little I have read of Joyce, I hate most of what Faulkner I have read, and I find Proust nearly as unreadable.
This work is the only work by Virginia Woolf I have ever read. It took me nearly forever to finish it. Reading it's long, winding, meandering sentences was like walking through molasses.
Thank goodness I have finally, FINALLY finished it.
I hope to never ever read anything else by Virginia Woolf.
And I mean that.
Keep her stuff away from me.
It just does not interest me at all....Having said all that, I must hasten to add, however, that I do recognize this novel, this ability to string together random thoughts and make some semblance of sense out of them, to be a work of clear genius. It must've taken her a staggering amount of work, amount of thought. The woman clearly had a wealth of intellect and talent. Just keep anything else by her away from me, because it doesn't interest me in the slightest, this detailed, ultra-remonstrated British upper-crust mindset stuff.
 Slow April 20, 2004
Slow isn't necessarily bad, but in this book it was. I am biased against the 'consciousness' style of writing, so my perception of this book was already negative before I started reading it. The book wasn't too difficult to understand (unlike The Sound and Fury by Faulkner) but it was just plain uninteresting. William Bankes (a character in the book) said concerning literature "let us enjoy what we do enjoy," and I simply did not enjoy Virginia Wolfe's book.
 Woolf's "Lighthouse:" Persistence Pays April 16, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Those who come to Virginia Woolf for the first time do not know quite what to make of her style. Most authors structure their novels in the traditional rising action, climax, falling action manner. A linear line of plot is most often the key to their works. In Woolf's novels, she eschews such straight line plotting in favor of a weirdly blended kaleidoscopic view that makes relentless use of both a stream of consciousness narrator and interior monologues. In TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, Woolf tells the tale of a married couple, the Ramsays, who lived in England just before the First World War. The Ramsays are the prototypical Victorian family replete with servants, a summer beach house, eight children, and a keen awareness of the fragility of life. What happens to them is neither earth shaking nor memorable. What happens within them is of far greater consequence. As Woolf focuses on each character, she presents a highly subjective view of the internal thought processes of that character. Each thought is like a ripple caused by a stone thrown into a still pool. Woolf allows her character to meander not only spatially (from point to point) but also chronologically. Events are described as if they were occurring within the literal present, but most often the events are from the past merging into the future. Thus, the plot ripple pool is constantly crosscutting each other with events removed from each other both in space and in time. It is no wonder, then, that readers unfamiliar with such an expanding and contracting temporal flux are confused. Woolf challenges her readers to involve themselves in a manner that requires a dedication to reading not often found in more traditionally structured novels.
As one reads from section to section (there are three: The Window, Time Passes, and The Lighthouse), one becomes aware that the novel's primary symbols--the lighthouse, Lily's painting, the sea, and the internalized thought processes of Mrs. Ramsay--function in a manner that does not become clear until after one has read considerably into this admittedly puzzling work. The initial clue lies within the title of the book: "To the Lighthouse." Thus, the lighthouse is seen both as a starting point in a journey (its radiating beacon of light lies close to the Ramsay's summer home) and a destination in that the youngest of the Ramsays, James, wants to go there, but it takes him ten years to do so. Lily is Lily Briscoe, a close friend of the Ramsays who seems to have difficulty painting a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay, no great surprise there since that portrait points not so much to Mrs. Ramsay as it does to an abiding life-long interest of Virginia Woolf herself: the desire to impose order and form on a universe that is inherently chaotic. It is crucial to note that Lily succeeds only at the very end of the novel when Mrs. Ramsay has long been dead, thus emphasizing the ephemeral nature of her task. Mrs. Ramsay's personality also is a barometer of Woolf's belief that the post Great War society of England would forevermore be seen as formless as Mrs. Ramsay's meandering thoughts. The first section "The Window" forms the bulk of the book. It is here that Woolf depicts a rather ordinary family who collectively symbolizes the inability of individuals to leave an abiding footprint on the shifting sands of time. In the second part "Time Passes," time does indeed pass, ten years worth. The home of the Ramsays falls into decay that requires the re-entry of the surviving family members to invigorate it and themselves in the final section "The Lighthouse." Lily's painting of the now deceased Mrs. Ramsay allows Virginia Woolf to claim even a minor victory in the ultimately losing battle against cultural entropy.I suspect that the major reason that most readers have with this book lies in their immediate recognition that they have to pay a great deal of attention to psychological free associating. As the characters' thoughts bounce off each other both temporarily and spatially, so must those of the readers, a most imposing task. But for those with persistence and an eye for the nontraditional in plotting, the effort is usually worth it.
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