With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked
Rating: 1.5/5
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read the book, this review will contain spoilers so it’s up to you if you continue…
Woolf is famed for her stream of consciousness style - perhaps the most well known characteristic of modernism - exploring the characters through inner processes rather than outside observations. For this reason, To the Lighthouse is perhaps one of the hardest books I’ve read. Though the language is easy enough, even in the more poetic passages, what hinders you as you read is an inability to tell whose thoughts you’re reading. I found myself halfway through a paragraph and realising I was reading it in the wrong voice, having to retrace my steps to understand who was actually talking. Though this usually made the passage make more sense, it was a frustrating way to read.
I enjoyed the unusual use of time within the book, having the first and third parts span only short periods of time though they were the longest, and the middle was only a very short section despite containing the passage of years. This middle section was possibly my favourite part of the book; being from a kind of omniscient narrator’s point of view, I found it easier to follow. It was the lack of character influence in this section that made me enjoy it so much, which doesn’t say much for the rest of the narration. The poetic language was quite beautiful and representing the war through the effect on the house was actually quite moving. I enjoyed not encountering a characters thought at every turn and just seeing how the house changed over time, I could finally picture things in my head. I had quite a vivid idea of what the house would look like, but all the characters were something of a freeze-frame, condensed into just one idea; Mrs Ramsay was with her youngest son, James, Mr Ramsay wore a suit and stood outside, Lily Briscoe was painting. No character became three-dimensional to me, despite being able to see more of who they were internally.
The whole thing came off a little pretentious in my mind. It’s a shame because I really loved Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Her fiction, however, felt false. Maybe I’m too shallow for people like Mrs Ramsay and Lily, but I can’t relate to observing several hundred things about a person from just the way they glance outside. Thought was well portrayed in To the Lighthouse, with punctuation being utilised in many forms to represent the pauses and turns thoughts make in our heads, but it the thoughts themselves didn’t feel like natural representations of what people think about. At times I understood, at other times I couldn’t appreciate the nuanced understanding people thought they had of those that surrounded them - especially when barely anything was spoken so I couldn’t tell, as a reader, where the characters had got this understanding of those that surrounded them. Despite being so internal, I frequently felt outside the narrative, not understanding what was happening. The whole thing was just so difficult and I think if I hadn’t had to read it for an exam, I’d have given up very early on.
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