I liked thjs one more than Mrs. Dalloway, especially the last part of the first act. I liked the protagonists more, and I enjoyed the descriptions of the summer house and the nature a lot. I guess there were parts I didn't really grasp, but in other parts the feeling of recognition was almost too strong for me to enjoy it. It's a great book, and very serious, academic in its analysis of the souls and relationships of the Ramsay family and their friends. ( )

A slow start, but once you're in then you're locked in. My book club chose this book because it was to be a review of the difference of the sexes. I read it to be more about the significance of importance we put on our lives or how we get so wound up in the moment and missing everything that really is important.

Woolf shows the time wasted on such thoughts and missed opportunities to breath in the moment, really enjoying what you have and where you are. She does an amazing job of getting this point across in the second part where she moves 10 years across the pages, where the people are gone but the objects, possessions and mother nature remain. Then again in the 3rd passage where Cam looks from the boat and sees the cottage and its isle off the horizon getting smaller and smaller while the sea seems to engulf the little island and making it all look so insignificant to the overall horizon.

Woolf does gives us some significance as she describes scenes of people past still being forever part of a place or moment that lives on in the rest of us.

Upon finishing it, I immediately went back to re-read the first passage because initially I struggled to get through it. To the Lighthouse is a book that is better each time you read it. ( )

Author: Virginia Woolf
Review: June 19, 2009
Edition: 1978 printing
Pages: 310
Overall Rating: 3/5 [Average-Good]
Synopsis: Everyone has private worlds---sensitivities that aren't immediately understood, hopes and dreams that are affected by these sensitivities, and different interpretations for every object. This book explores those connections by examining the thoughts of a host of varied characters.
Strengths: ---
Weaknesses: ---
Further Review: I hesitate to actually review this book, because I've never read anything like it before and lack a frame of reference by which to judge it. The novel is, to me, both interesting and depressing. The prose is beautiful and unique, particularly in describing settings (my favorite part of the book is part II, which is just used to express the passage of time), but the actual characters feel very alien to me. I know this work is highly introspective, but the characters' moods and feelings change so rapidly that it's disconcerting; it's like being on a constant emotional roller coaster. All of the characters are sensitive to a psychologically disturbing degree, with their moods changing from minute to minute in unusually rapid extremes, and after finishing the novel as I went to read about Virginia Woolf's life (this is my first novel by her) I was not surprised to see she struggled with intense depressive episodes. If my thoughts ran similar to any of the characters I'd be going mad, too, and from gathering information about the book it seems that this one has some parallels to her own life and she wrote it as a reaction to her own feelings on her mother. Still, I would not want to experience life as any of the characters do, especially as Lily Briscoe. Although I admire her strength in choosing to do what she loves (painting) over marrying or giving in to Charles Tansley's petulant insults, she is even more exhausting than the others. On the other hand, their thought processes are interesting and their personalities believable albeit a little extreme.

As a symbol, I appreciate the lighthouse; this is beautifully selected to represent the journey of the characters' struggles to a final conclusion, since the lighthouse itself is such a lonely, solitary figure, so that even when the characters receive what they want (Lily, her vision completed; James, approval from his father; Cam, harmony) it's still that each character has their own, very introverted and private desire that is not shared at all with anybody. Perfectly accented with Mr. Ramsey quoting, "We perished, each alone." ( )

Woolf is so amazing...the only reason I don't give it five stars is because she's just so darned hard to read! But it's worth the effort! ( )

This classic Virginia Woolf novel is such a "mood piece." Comprised of three major sections, To the Lighthouse is predominantly a portrait of the Ramsey family and its influential, beautiful matriarch. Most of the "action" (and I use that term loosely) takes place at a summer home off the coast of Scotland. Part 1 is a "day in the life" of Mrs. Ramsey, whose house is chock-a-block with visitors. She is a constant presence, caring for the youngest of her eight children, keeping a watchful eye on her moody husband, meddling a bit in young romance, and ensuring both timely, well-prepared meals and the general happiness of her guests. The tempo is slow, the imagery evocative, the overall feeling ethereal.

Part 2 is a short section called "Time Passes," in which the next ten years unfold in factual narrative. And yet this section, which unveiled a number of significant Ramsey family events, had a surprisingly emotional impact. This was followed by Part 3, with the Ramsey family once again at their holiday home, picking up the pieces of a life gone somewhat awry. The youngest children, now teenagers, accompany their father on a visit to a lighthouse near the island. They are filled with teenage resentment, pent up over years of somewhat tyrannical paternal rule. Their emotions ebb and flow like the waves lapping at the side of their boat.

And what happens, exactly? Not much. And yet, somehow, I was entranced by this family's 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 (p. 47) This is a book best read, and re-read, and savored to glean new details and insights each time. ( )