To The Lighthouse

August's book on my New Year's Resolution Reading List was To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Here's what Time Magazine had to say about it:

After Woolf published her breakthrough novel Mrs. Dalloway, she raised the stakes and broadened her focus. To the Lighthouse is a stately dance of time, hope and art, as performed by the Ramsay family and their immediate friends as they vacation at a house in the Hebrides. Mrs. Ramsay is a housewife and hostess; her husband is a cold, analytical philosopher; drawn in their wake are, among others, a struggling young painter named Lily Briscoe and their little son James, whose dearest wish is to take a boat ride to a nearby lighthouse. The novel begins as a poignant portrait of family dynamics, but Woolf sets the second half of the book a decade after the first, and that allows her to turn To the Lighthouse into a study of the damage that time and history inflict on the Ramsays' hopes and dreams, and a celebration of what endures.

I am big Virginia Woolf fan and I loved "Three Guineas" and "A Room of One's Own", both non-fiction.

I guess the groundbreaking thing about this is that it really has little plot to speak of.  Its sort as if you had a secretary in your head just recording your thoughts as you went through your day - the plot actually becomes unnecessary for the author's purposes, we're just sort of eavesdropping in the characters' heads.    I think the payoff in the book does come from the passage of time and we see the way the characters have changed and the way Mrs. Ramsay's thoughts, fears and aspirations for her family have ultimately played out over time.  

I thought the book was interesting and moving.  I didn't love it the way I had perhaps wanted to, but it was well worth the time.