There is so much attention given to each individual’s neuroses and preoccupations that they are often magnified beyond your typical day to day worries.

If at any time, the prose is lucid and clear, it is sure to take a turn for the chaotic within a few pages. The is intentional however, because the book is preoccupied with consciousness at its most mercurial. This is especially predominant in the opening section, when Woolf just shoves you into the churning waters of her prose and doesn’t throw you a life raft until 45 pages in. This book bounces back and forth between philosophy, psychology and fictionalized story telling in such an interweaving of narrative and personal reflection that it may be difficult to discern who is thinking what and which thoughts are the result of whom. I have never experienced such a strange brew of images and ideas that whirl around mere words of a novel, all of which has incited such excitement in me, as if some beautiful and aching aspect of human experience has been solidified on paper that will never be as perfect as it is here. I left several exclamation points and expressions of pure joy among the marginalia of my copy. At a certain point Woolf describes an idea entering a character’s mind as a drop of ink diffusing in a beaker of water. So much of the prose was redolent of an abstract surrealist film, such were the clarity and preciseness of its images. I can say without reservation, that this is some of the most incredible writing I’ve ever come across and I’m absolutely baffled as to how Woolf pulled it off. I’ve never dwelt over a set of 200 bound pages with as much joy and relish as I have with To the Lighthouse.

Woolf to the lighthouse