To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

This is one of those worthy books where I really admire what the author is doing intellectually but I remain entirely unengaged emotionally.

The book is structured in 3 sections, like 2 rooms connected by a corridor. The first and last sections are interior monologues with varying perspectives on a middle-class family and various associates. The central section, entitled “Passing Time”, is brief but encompasses the deaths of 3 major characters as well as World War One – disposed of in a sentence, although it permeates the entire book in other ways. Woolf does fascinating technical stuff with narrative structure, grammar, shifting points of view and so on, but ultimately I cared not a jot for the characters being depicted. Are we supposed to? I think so.

If you are interested in Virginia Woolf I would say she’s well worth the effort, but to begin with Mrs Dalloway, which has a more approachable human face.