I was in my mid-twenties when I first read THE WAVES. Frankly, it gave me the same willies (spooky feelings) that I got when I read Flannery O'Connor's short stories. Her contemporaries wer always complaining that Mrs. Woolf's novels were not quite real. Well, I ask you: have you ever come across a 'real' novel? Isn't it like wondering what Hamlet was doing before the play got started. Playing whist? Did Poldy REALLY have a bar of lemon soap in his pocket? Who can tell for sure, not even Harold.
A. Huxley felt that her novels were bloodless. So did Lawrence. I am certain of one thing: that we shouldn't be influenced by another opinion on the subject of novels or any other form of art. The redoubtable David Herbert Lawrence, notwithstanding.
By the way, it still gives me the shakes, but it is doubtlessly a powerful work of art. But don't take my word for it. ( )

Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking work of imaginative fiction telling of a group of six close friends through the use of imagined thoughts and spoken words. A novel that needs the reader to just surrender oneself to it's hypnotic power.

The culmination of Virginia Woolf's explorations of modernist narrative which builds to a vivid and powerful climax that could stand as an epitaph for her. ( )

Her Best ! ( )

English speakers everywhere should thank whatever higher power allowed for Virginia Woolf to write in their native tongue. They should, at the same time, thank her for gracing the world with books like "The Waves." Difficult? Of course, but so is existence, and no one, in any tradition, has been better at expressing the tumultuous inner space of being. This book, told as a series of interior monologues told by six characters, broken into chapters by brief descriptions of a beach at different times of day, is not an easy read, there is no doubt about that, but it is not obscure or pedantic. Its "difficultness" lies in its idiosyncrasies, in its subjective view toward reality, in its fragmentation, in its personality: its difficulty lies in how well it parallels individual experience and existence. By allowing each character to speak exclusively from its own private and self-serving platform, it makes a noble attempt at rectifying the artificiality of the text with the unknowableness of life, even if it fails to truly rectify the rift (which is impossible anyway). Perhaps, however, it would be better appreciated if other works are used as an introduction to Woolf's style; not to say that To the Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway are easy books, but they are easier for the novice to Woolf's style to wrap her/his mind around. Reading it requires concentration and effort, but like trying to truly know a person, all the travail is worth it in the end. Immerse yourself in the book, and feel how great literature truly can be. ( )

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