To the Lighthouse (1927)

The lack of a conscience awareness of time completely threw me for a loop in this book until I realized that the point was to show that time did not matter. Time would pass at it always had and there were to paths to spend your time pursuing: logic and emotion. In the end, time did not care which one you picked. Lily painting is a way to prove that only photos and physical reminders of moments will be able to capture time at a particular moment. The whole point of this novel was to show that how we spend our time matters and quarreling or meddling in other people’s lives is irrelevant. Do what you can with the time you have, because it isn’t waiting for anyone.

“She felt... 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. ”

Now this is the first Virginia Woolf book that I have read but having done a little bit of research beforehand know that it is probably the most widely read and auto-biographical of her works.

The book is split into 3 seperate parts 'The Window','Time Passes' and 'The Lighthouse'. In the first part the Ramsays, their 8 children and assorted house guests are all staying at their holiday home. On the surface it is the ideal family gathering but this is deceiving as their are seething tensions under the surface. A trip is planned but never taken to the nearby lighthouse. In the third part after a hiatus of 10 years in which Mrs Ramsay and 2 of the children have died, Prue in childbirth and Andrew in the trenches of WWI,the trip is finally made. The middle section tells more of the house than its occupants but it is here that the deaths are reported, in block brackets almost like newsflashes and somehow remote.

Now as a male parent I found the overall message in this book rather troubling as Mr Ramsay is seen as strict, remote and always craving to be the centre of attention. It is he who interupts the well being of the family. He steps in front of a window interupting the intimacy between a child and its mother, he almost knocks over Lily's easel interupting an artist from the painting but primarily it is he who forbids the visit to the lighthouse in Part 1. In contrast Mrs Ramsay as the one who manages the fabric of the family endlessly knitting and matchmaking as she hates seperation in all forms. This too is seen in the author's syntax. Mr Ramsay's, when he speaks or the narator speaks for him, does so in disjointed sentences and random quotations whereas Mrs Ramsay's sentences are much more fluid. Even in death Mrs Ramsay her memory is still seen as unifying. Whilst this portrayal of parenting is probably true it is still a little unsettling to read.

Yet the final part also shows that we are all also shaped by events of both present and past. There is a suggestion that the family as a whole will not truly be able to move on. A certain realisation that things are never so black and white.

So why only 3 stars? Was it just my discomfort as a parent? Well quite frankly I did not really enjoy the whole 'stream of consciousness' style of writing and generally found the overall lack of action rather tedious. It got 3 stars because of its originality, pure and simple ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/10494186

קשה לקריאה אבל שווה את המאמץ. אני בטוח שהייתי יכול​ להפיק הרבה יותר מהספר בקריאה שנייה ושלישית.​ ( )

Just reread this a few years ago. Still breathtaking. ( )