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    To the Lighthouse
    To the Lighthouse
    To the Lighthouse
    Audiobook7 hours

    To the Lighthouse

    Written by Virginia Woolf

    Narrated by Juliet Stevenson

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Just before the First World War, the Ramsay family go to their holiday home in the Hebrides, bringing several guests with them. While they are there, one of the children wants to visit a lighthouse. After a ten year gap, during which the war wreaks its havoc on Europe, one of the guests returns to the house; and another trip to the lighthouse is proposed. Told from multiple viewpoints, in language that is precise, delicate and allusive, To The Lighthouse gives unprecedented insight into the minds of the characters, as well as telling a broader story of personal and social change in the world after the war. To The Lighthouse is a landmark work of English fiction. Virginia Woolf explores perception and meaning in some of the most beautiful prose ever written, minutely detailing the characters thoughts and impressions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateApr 1, 2008
    ISBN9789629546182
    Author

    Virginia Woolf

    VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

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    Reviews for To the Lighthouse

    4/5

    334 ratings129 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a mixed bag. Many appreciate the fantastic narration and the way Virginia Woolf narrates the novel through different perspectives. The prose is beautiful and the book explores important themes. However, some readers find the book boring and monotonous, with too many characters that are of no consequence. They feel that the plot is lacking and the book is dated. Overall, the book is enjoyed for its lyrical prose and modernist style, but it may not be for everyone.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A novel that deserves and demands the full attention of the reader, it is hardly surprising that To the Lighthouse might be described as a novel of and about attention. As the narration flits between Mrs Ramsay and her husband, their eight children, and their numerous guests all gathered at the Ramsay summer house on a Hebridean island, one thought leads to another, one observation spills into the next, one emotion peaks and subsides as another peaks and subsides like the waves endlessly rolling in upon the shore. And then there is the question of lighthouse on a crag of rock across the bay, whose light pierces the summer house and its inhabitants, ceaselessly. Will James, the youngest Ramsay, be taken to the lighthouse the following day?If Mrs Dalloway is the quintessential stream-of-consciousness novel, then Woolf’s next novel, To the Lighthouse, must surely be the start of something new, something even more intense, more challenging. Attention, or perhaps perception would be a better term, or even, as Lily Briscoe terms it “vision”, is the challenge. For it seems clear that it is almost impossible to really see someone, anyone. Even Mrs Ramsay, who is as much the centre of all that is as anyone could be, even for her, Lily thinks, it would take at least fifty pairs of eyes. And yet, the wonder of it is, that for some—the poet Augustus Carmichael, the painter Lily Briscoe, even the still beautiful wife and mother, Mrs Ramsay—the thing itself can be achieved. And it is an achievement when it comes. Even though it may disappear as quickly as it came.If you are willing to engage with this novel fully, if you can focus your attention sufficiently (don’t be surprised if you find you need to read it in small chunks), if you let the consciousness of the novel guide you as it sparkles across the minds of those characters arrayed before you, then this novel will repay your effort manifold. If not, then set it aside for a few years and try again later. It’s worth it. Highly recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      What a treat to read a masterpiece. I love the way Virginia Woolf writes weaving the story through the thoughts of each character. The silence of her characters held by unspoken rules and expectations they live their lives on the edge of what’s expected of them and what they want to question.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      There are books I’ve had on my shelves that I have always meant to read, and that I feel I ought to have read. To The Lighthouse was one of those books, so I took it with me on holiday and read it.But I didn’t really know what it was about, and it’s a strange book to encounter if you have no preconceptions. The first section, with its cloyingly deep analysis of the minutia of life, hundreds of pages where nothing much happens except they go to dinner, all the Meaning trapped in ‘do you think it will be fine enough to go to the Lighthouse tomorrow?’ ‘No, I think it will not be fine’. Marriage and motherhood and thwarted career ambitions and hosting and matchmaking, and the way the smallest thing can hold so much meaning. I found it quite intractable and frustrating at first, and then found a rhythm and a sympathy and settled into it...... when all at once I hit the second part and the book simultaneously broke my brain and my heart. Ten years pass in a flurry of pages. People we had known down to the grain on their fingerprints are casually dispatched in passing in the final sentence of a paragraph. The house slowly decays, the bubble that has been there so clearly is gone, as the dust and mould creep in.And then in the final part we are there again, and are drawn into musing around what fingerprints do we leave on the world, how are we remembered, what is success? Those complex family relationships, so much love and anger tangled up,and all inside, no ripples on the surface. But we paint. And we make it to the Lighthouse.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This book was in my top 3 worst books I have forced myself to read. Normally when I dislike a book I will stop, but since this is hailed as a literary masterpiece, I continued on, waiting for it to improve. I appreciate very much that it is beautiful prose. If you like poetry this may be an enjoyable read. If you like a wonderful story with a point and a plot, steer clear. I'm sorry I will not pretend to be so sophisticated that I could suffer through the monotony of these repetitive desciptions of the endless suffering of the mind over nothing. There is just this everpresent feeling of whining, in long beautiful ways. I like how it highlights gender but it is so dated.
      The bulk of this book is spent introducing a ton of characters, most who are of absolutely no consequence. It drags out a single boring day and the torturous thoughts and pointless musings of minds without real problems. The story is continually describing in terrific detail, nothing. She even writes how none of it matters in her own pen. It's a forgettable day in a bunch of dreary
      people's existence. It describes, for chapter after chapter, the injustices and tyrany of being taken on a boat ride. This book is one giant lament to what we now call first world problems and is mostly just depressing. It is so pointless it becomes painful.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Typical Woolf. Long sentences. Inner dialogues showing way too much overthinking. Way too much detail over little nothings. Tiring. Nothing exactly happens in the the book. Things happen between chapters, then characters start the next chapter thinking about what happened. But we never see what happens.But poor James spent 10 years waiting to get his visit to the lighthouse. Which we don't actually get to see or hear about, because the book ends as they begin getting out of the book.Glad it's done. Glad it was short.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This book reads more like a poem than a novel. Evocative, fragile, nuanced, ephemeral moments of family life set in a gorgeous landscape. It would make a beautiful arthouse movie with long scenes filled with stark seascapes and little action.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      “She felt... how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach. ” Now this is the first Virginia Woolf book that I have read but having done a little bit of research beforehand know that it is probably the most widely read and auto-biographical of her works.The book is split into 3 seperate parts 'The Window','Time Passes' and 'The Lighthouse'. In the first part the Ramsays, their 8 children and assorted house guests are all staying at their holiday home. On the surface it is the ideal family gathering but this is deceiving as their are seething tensions under the surface. A trip is planned but never taken to the nearby lighthouse. In the third part after a hiatus of 10 years in which Mrs Ramsay and 2 of the children have died, Prue in childbirth and Andrew in the trenches of WWI,the trip is finally made. The middle section tells more of the house than its occupants but it is here that the deaths are reported, in block brackets almost like newsflashes and somehow remote.Now as a male parent I found the overall message in this book rather troubling as Mr Ramsay is seen as strict, remote and always craving to be the centre of attention. It is he who interupts the well being of the family. He steps in front of a window interupting the intimacy between a child and its mother, he almost knocks over Lily's easel interupting an artist from the painting but primarily it is he who forbids the visit to the lighthouse in Part 1. In contrast Mrs Ramsay as the one who manages the fabric of the family endlessly knitting and matchmaking as she hates seperation in all forms. This too is seen in the author's syntax. Mr Ramsay's, when he speaks or the narator speaks for him, does so in disjointed sentences and random quotations whereas Mrs Ramsay's sentences are much more fluid. Even in death Mrs Ramsay her memory is still seen as unifying. Whilst this portrayal of parenting is probably true it is still a little unsettling to read.Yet the final part also shows that we are all also shaped by events of both present and past. There is a suggestion that the family as a whole will not truly be able to move on. A certain realisation that things are never so black and white.So why only 3 stars? Was it just my discomfort as a parent? Well quite frankly I did not really enjoy the whole 'stream of consciousness' style of writing and generally found the overall lack of action rather tedious. It got 3 stars because of its originality, pure and simple

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Lily Briscoe is a kindred spirit. She asks a pertinent question at the beginning of the final section: what does it mean then, what can it all mean? I have been asking myself that, often out loud for most of my adult life. A pair of events this weekend illuminated that disposition and likely also besmirched my reading of To The Lighthouse. My Tenth wedding anniversary was followed quickly by the funeral for my uncle Fred. The first event was grand, of course, though it does lend itself to a certain survey, of sorts. The second was simply queer. this was no great tragedy, the man was 85 years old had seven sons and had suffered through terrible health these last few years. I leaned quickly that there are no poets in that section of my family and apparently no Democrats either. It was nice to hug, slap backs and smile at one another, most of the time counting the decades since we last spoke at length. Through the depths of such I ran to the Woolf and read for an odd half hour here and there.

      To the Lighthouse is a tale of caprice and desperation. It is a kaleidoscope of resonance and impressions. Much like life it can be dusty and wind swept on an even manner. I would likely have been great affected were it not for the switchbacks of the weekend.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely love this book. I like reading while listening to the audiobook as it helps me concentrate better. My print edition was an 90s Oxford World’s Classics. It was interesting that the audiobook version was 97% exactly the same, and some of the small differences where noted on the footnotes as divergences between published editions.
    • 2/5
      Dear Goodreads, please let us give books a 'half' star!!! This is 2.5.

      As an experienced reader, every now and then, I come across a book that is complex and difficult to read. This is that book. I felt like I think my students feel when they read and then tell me "I don't get it." Usually I tell them that they weren't paying enough attention, but, after reading several reviews of this book, in which most people say "I had to re-read several parts to understand." I don't feel upset that it was confusing. I myself felt no need to re read anything in this novel.

    • 5/5
      One of my favorite works of literature - a work that demonstrates the beauty of modernism, perspective, the bending of time to the rhythm of everyday consciousness.
    • 4/5
      Mrs Ramsey stuck in being a dutiful wife and mothet
    • 4/5
      At times really beautiful with tremendous insight into human psychology, but dense and hard to wade through. I had to go back and re-read passages constantly, and the book sat on my desk for weeks at times because it felt more like studying than reading for enjoyment, and because there is little plot line that makes you want to pick up the book to find out what happens next. Ultimately the exploration into the psyches of the characters resonated with me and was rewarding. It'll be a while, though, before I embark on my next Virginia Woolf novel.
    • 4/5
      A confession: though I am a great admirer of Woolf as a woman and a literary innovator, I find her prose style virtually impenetrable. Particularly in Part One, I found the stream of consciousness style and the sudden shifts of narrator hard to follow. Often I had to re-read passages to work out who was speaking, which significantly reduced my enjoyment of the book.
    • 5/5
      As I've grown older, I've realized that Woolf is a pleasure best left for later in life, after the sheer novelty of experience has been burnished (or worn, depending on who you are and what's happened to you) into a soft, many-sided glow. Novels like Woolf's aren't the arduous, look-at-me fantod-inducing flummoxifiers that Faulkner (a favorite of mine, don't leave me messages about my philistinism!) shoved at us; they start, they don't commence; they flow with you or without you, they don't drag you along, barely above the frothing surface of the torrent of words*burp*Joyce*burp*; they move without undue fanfare from person to person, from place to place, and they never demand (or care, if we're honest) whether you're there or not.I guess it comes across that I'm a fanboy. Well, I am, so what?This is the novel Woolf considered her finest, though I don't agree with that assessment, being a partisan of Mrs Dalloway for that title. I think she felt it was her finest because she was so much in it; it was a means of exorcising the ghosts of growing up in the Stephen household. It's set in the same place that the Stephens spent their summers, and most of the events are identical to events in Virginia's young life. I am glad that the book succeeded, artistically and psychologically and materially; but I don't find in it the sheer, rapturous joy that I find in Mrs Dalloway.But it's not for everyone. Leave it alone until you're at a point in life where your own memories are soft and rounded; while they're sharp and painful, Woolf won't be likely to find room in your head to spread her soft cotton blanket of story.
    • 1/5
      Thuddingly slow, I really struggled to connect with this book. For all its reputation as a deep, thoughtful piece of writing, it seemed to me preoccupied with women and how they find husbands - or how sad it is when they don't.
    • 5/5
      It’s a masterful novel. Apart from the beautiful and lyrical narration that focuses on the inner life of characters- exchanges, inner dialogue, pervasive thoughts, and all that has been since labeled the stream of consciousness, I found the proportions of the novel extremely interesting. The structure of the plot has what seems inverted proportions. In a traditional plot structure, events, especially those life-changing or dramatic, would be given prominence in the plot, and the lesser events or no events really if we think of the inner life of the characters on an perfectly ordinary day, would occupy proportionally less space. Yet, here what we would take for the most dramatic events are mere en passant mentions and the inner life of the characters takes over the plot. Within those inner dialogues is the best rendering of a wordless exchange between a husband and a wife I have ever read.
    • 4/5
      The most "real" novel I have ever read.... Magnifies the innermost thoughts and perceptions of life and being... The events themselves are minimal...it is the flow of these perceptions and thoughts that this great work is all about...
    • 5/5
      Absolutely breathtaking literature.
    • 5/5
      Actually, it is that good, and you and I just aren't smart enough to get it. That said, if you're willing to think it over for a good long while, even if you won't get it, you'll have lots of fun and become a better person. So stop whinging and read.
    • 5/5
      I've read this and Mrs Dalloway, and I've fallen in love with Woolf and her distinctive style - the way her narrative flits between characters like a fly on the wall that can see inside people's minds is so absorbing. I especially liked the dinner scene for that reason. There was also lots of musing about time, sort of Proust-lite (very lite!), and also lots of division, mainly between male and female perspectives but I think it was a general motif - which called to mind E M Forster, all of whose novels seem to be about some sort of irreconcilable diametric opposite. And Woolf's prose is just gorgeous - I love the rhythm and the interruptions and repetitions. Thumbs up from me!
    • 4/5
      Although I think I like Mrs. Dalloway better, this wasn't bad.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this novel much more than I expected to. Not in the way of enjoying a classic writer who leaves you with the duty of struggling through her complexity, but as I would enjoy a good novel with an interesting story. True, the style and characterization are purely modern and, for some, a little too technical, however, the story itself and the characters were my reasons for enjoying this book so much. As stunning as it is to witness the bright and clear precision of Woolf's style, To the Lighthouse is overall a charming and lovely novel.
    • 3/5
      I read this book less than two years ago, but I barely remember it- the sole scene I can pluck from my mind is of a character describing an impressionist style painting. I've looked at the books I read around when I read this one and every one has stuck with me to a greater degree than To The Lighthouse, even the books I didn't much care for are present more vividly than this one.

      So for better or worse my assessment of this book is that it is almost completely forgettable.
    • 3/5
      peculiar but interesting; just not a huge fan of literature for arts' sake alone.
    • 2/5
      This one is very difficult to rate. I try to use the Goodreads star labels as strict guidelines and I didn't think "it was ok"; however, I gave it two stars because I acknowledge that it's not fair to give it only one star just because it was mostly incomprehensible to me. It did have moments of brilliance, notably in the poetic language of the “Time Passes” interlude. I'm glad I read this, but I don't think I'll be attempting any more Woolf in the near future.
    • 4/5
      This one has been too long waiting, like the children for their trip to the lighthouse. And, like the children, when they finally got to go, I approached it with mixed feelings and a little reluctance. It's one thing to love, love, love a difficult work you've known for 40 years and read multiple times with increasing understanding and appreciation. It's another to take on a new one, by a relatively unfamiliar (to me) author, and find an affinity. Virginia Woolf has lingered in the background of my literary experience, a bit of an intimidating presence, but no one ever forced me to reach out and take her hand. I'm quite glad that I have now done so, but I wasn't wrong to be trepidatious. Some scholar has probably counted the number of point-of-view shifts in this book; they come, usually, just as the reader is settling into one character's mind, and starting to feel comfortable there. The book is mainly about impressions, perceptions, images, and imaginings. There is virtually no plot. A few major life events are given parenthetical nods ("you need to know this happens, but you don't need to see it happen"). The setting is compelling--an island in the Hebrides, a shabby house, lawns, gardens and vistas of the open sea. The people are quite ordinary, with a few oddities among them, just like the people you know. The whole is a sum of the parts...a rather unexpected, but absolutely correct sum. This is a novel I am sure to return to, as there is simply too much to take in in a single reading.Reviewed January 28, 2014
    • 4/5
      Her style is strange - it took me a while to get into. I've been trying to read 'the Waves' and I've found it very difficult, too 'arty' and a lot of the time I don't know who is being talked about or what's going on. I wanted to like it but I found this very difficult to enjoy, it felt like hard work the whole time.
    • 3/5
      You know as you go through your day you have a million little thoughts about a million little things? Almost like a noise in the back of your head, all the time. Every single thought clammering for your attention. Of course you filter the thoughts and control the noise, you have to. Right?

      This story is like that, every thought of every character in turn demanding attention. There is no filter, no respite. If you don't hear everything you won't get the full story, so you have to read it all.

      I personally found that exhausting and not a particularly joyful reading experience. I feel bad that I didn't like it more as there were some truly beautifully written sections, but hey. That's okay.
    • 2/5
      2.5 stars

      Woolf writes beautifully, but I think the form of her novel just isn't for me.