“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.” Eugh even making it to the end of this book feels like an achievement so I'm going to make this brief.
To The Lighthouse is unlike anything else I've ever read. Virtually devoid of plot, the book is a portrait of the Ramsay family and their friends during summers spent at their holiday home in Scotland. In the absence of action and dialogue, Woolf's focus is on the emotions, thoughts, and observations of the book's multiple narrators. This is achieved by way of a free-flowing stream-of-consciousness narrative style (i.e. wordy, incomprehensible ramblings) which was impossible to follow without an insane amount of effort that I just wasn't able to muster. In the end I found myself skimming through page after page in a bid to finish the thing (which is probably why I'm finding it so difficult to come up with much to say about it!). Needless to say, the devout adoration this novel and its author receives is completely beyond me.
I don't even care enough about To The Lighthouse to hate it, such is my complete apathy towards this book.
RATING: ★☆☆☆☆
Lou x
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