To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)

The story of the Ramsay family and friends in the Hebrides, before and after the Great War.

Book Review: To the Lighthouse seems to create only a very small picture, but reminds us that every day consists of a thousand moments, small events, all of which have meaning. That love and the other thousand feelings that connect us to other people, are real even if they cannot be fully unraveled. The reader can get as much from this book as she is willing to put in. Woolf's writing is simultaneously beautiful, inventive, and magical, and occasionally difficult. When we speak of writers such as Joyce and Proust, we must also include their contemporary Virginia Woolf, their peer in every way. To the Lighthouse seemed more accessible, easier to follow, than some of Woolf's other books and may be a good place to begin with one's Woolf reading. Very little seems to happen in the exterior world of this novel, but the interior world of the characters is busy, fraught, and crowded. When events occur in the exterior world, events barely mentioned here, they are momentous. And the interior world goes on. To the Lighthouse is in three parts, the first day when discussion is had whether to take a trip to the lighthouse across the bay; then the "Time Passes" section in which time indeed passes and the devastation, horror, and death of the Great War occurs. After which the interior world continues, but everything is changed. Finally we have a later day, in which a trip to the lighthouse across the bay is again proposed. The lighthouse itself can happily be an endless discussion for symbologists everywhere. So much is interior here that it leaves endless room for readers and their own interior thoughts. This was fresh, enjoyable, accessible, reminding us how much can be captured in a grain of sand.  [4★]