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Loading... To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 1st (first) Edition [Paperback(1989)] (1927)
Work InformationTo the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
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This book club pick was my second Virginia Woolf, and since I’d read Mrs. Dalloway several years ago, I at least had some idea of what to expect stylistically going into it. And that’s the point, really, with Virginia Woolf anyways, that stream-of-consciousness style. It’s certainly not plot, as not much happens here. The book is divided into three sections: in the first, the Ramsays, a large family with eight children, are at their home in the Hebrides off the coast of Scotland and discuss whether or not they will take a trip to the local lighthouse the next day as they host a dinner party with many of the friends that have become a part of their orbit. In the second, ten years pass (coinciding with the years of WWI) and a handful of deaths occur. And in the third, several but not all of the characters from the first section reunite at the house, and the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse occurs. It is, naturally, not “about” the plot at all. It’s about people, and Woolf takes us straight into their heads to give us a chance to see them from the inside. I found it particularly effective during the dinner party, because the anxieties being experienced by the various participants about whether they should have come at all or what they’re going to say, or if they’ve just said the wrong thing entirely, feel so relatable even nearly 100 years later. She’s often sharply witty in her observations of relations between men and women, highlighting the ridiculousness of male plays for female attention. I found her curiously minimalist on the subject of The Great War, though, mentioning it only through the death of one of the characters in combat. It seems odd that she just kind of glides past it, though maybe she felt she’d already said what she wanted to say in Mrs. Dalloway. As much as I get what she’s doing with the stream-of-consciousness choice, I have to admit I find it something less than enjoyable to read. It requires so much active attention and is rarely really worth the reward. It’s a good book, very much worth reading and something I liked, but the style is best in very small doses. ( ) El hijo menor de los Ramsay quiere ir al Faro que se ve del otro lado de la ventana, allá, lejos de la costa de la isla en la que están veraneando en familia. Pero mañana no hará buen día, dijo el padre, desalentando las fantasías del niño, y las de la madre que siempre lo apaña también. Así, se presenta una disyuntiva. Hay mucho en juego, los conflictos de poder y los roles de una familia quedan al desnudo en esta novela intimista de Virginia Woolf.
How was it that, this time, everything in the book fell so completely into place? How could I have missed it - above all, the patterns, the artistry - the first time through? How could I have missed the resonance of Mr Ramsay's Tennyson quotation, coming as it does like a prophecy of the first world war? How could I not have grasped that the person painting and the one writing were in effect the same? ("Women can't write, women can't paint..." ) And the way time passes over everything like a cloud, and solid objects flicker and dissolve? And the way Lily's picture of Mrs Ramsay - incomplete, insufficient, doomed to be stuck in an attic - becomes, as she adds the one line that ties it all together at the end, the book we've just read? "To the Lighthouse" has not the formal perfection, the cohesiveness, the intense vividness of characterization that belong to "Mrs. Dalloway." It has particles of failure in it. It is inferior to "Mrs. Dalloway" in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves. For in its portrayal of life that is less orderly, more complex and so much doomed to frustration, it strikes a more important note, and it gives us an interlude of vision that must stand at the head of all Virginia Woolf's work. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAldina (11) Biblioteca Folha (9) — 31 more Everyman's Library (949) Gallimard, Folio (2816) Gallimard, Folio Classique (2816) Penguin English Library, 2012 series (2018-06) Penguin Modern Classics (2165) Rainbow pocketboeken (52) La temerària (10) A tot vent (216) 池澤夏樹個人編集 世界文学全集 (2-1) Is contained inHas the adaptationHas as a studyThe Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life by Edward Mendelson Has as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guideAwardsNotable Lists
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: The subject of this extraordinary novel is the daily life of an English family in the Hebrides. "Radiant as [To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality."-Eudora Welty, from her Introduction. .No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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