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Synopsis
In TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1927) Virginia Woolf chooses a three-part structure and an elegiac, ode-like form to reveal the complexities of family politics. The autobiographical plot--which Woolf claimed finally "laid to rest" her conflicted feelings about her parents--begins in St. Ives, where Woolf's family, the Stephens, spent summers when she was a child. ("The sea is to be heard all through it," she wrote in her diary.) It then follows Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, their children, and a small cast of characters over the course of many years as their lives converge, change, and shatter. The novel is notable for the fact that it doesn't deal in large events--an important death happens offstage, almost offhandedly, and World War I never makes an appearance--but concentrates on the characters' internal, subjective reactions, which are revealed in multiple points of view. Woolf herself questioned whether TO THE LIGHTHOUSE should be called a novel or some entirely new form of literature. However, it is widely considered to be one of Woolf's finest achievements, notable for its elegant, nuanced language and its insight into the human condition as it is affected by time, death, and the bonds of family.
| Size | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Industry Reviews
"It really is most unfortunate that she rules out copulation--not the ghost of it visible--so that her presentation of things become little more...than an arabesque--an exquisite arabesque, of course."
letter - Lytton Strachey (05/07/1927)
"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."
New York Times Book Review - L. Kronenberger (05/08/1927)
"TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, is a book I can't read without weeping."
essay - Jane Smiley
"[A] I went through TO THE LIGHTHOUSE again, I was stunned by Virginia Woolf's prose. I could not read those tender, pressing, inward-driving sentences without stopping, reading again, and letting the words and rhythms sink in."
GREAT BOOKS - David Denby
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