To the Lighthouse

Synopsis: This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever. In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships. From an acute awareness of transcience, she creates an enduring work of art.

Review: The first thing that strikes you is the lack of information you're given, and the second is the lack of plot .. she's really not bothered about it. She just drops you into the story, into the middle of a situation .. into the middle of a conversation and expects you to immediately comprehend (alas, I frequently fell short of her expectations.) The book is split into three sections ('The Window, Time Passes & The Lighthouse'), all of them taking part at the Ramsay's holiday home on the Isle of Skye where the Ramsay family along with some friends and colleagues spend their summers. When we join the book, the youngest Ramsay child, six year old James is hoping that they will make a trip to the Lighthouse the next day, Mrs Ramsay is encouraging, Mr Ramsay is not, he doubts the weather will be fine enough and pours cold water on the scheme. I loved James's reaction which had a horrible ring of truth about it ... 'had there been an axe handy, or a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's head and killed him there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr Ramsay excited in his children's breasts by his mere presence.' The main protagonist would at first appear to be Mrs Ramsay, and she was definitely the person that interested me most (and said to be based on Virginia's mother) but the person we follow throughout the novel is Lily Briscoe, a young painter, attempting a portrait of Mrs Ramsay and, in the first instance, beset by worries and self doubt.

The second part of the book sees the house neglected and abandoned (save for an occasional visit from a caretaker,) it's full of ghosts and shadows ... 'What people had shed and left - a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes - those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again'. We are told about the fate of some of the characters, in passing as it were, all the big events, which would normally be given precedence in any story, have merely taken place in the gaps between the sections.

The last part sees some of the guests return years later to Skye. Lily is still trying to finish her painting and a trip to the Lighthouse is once more on the cards ... 'The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now- James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it?' No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.'

It's as unlike any other book that I've read as can be, the dialogue is brief, it's more about capturing thought, feelings, actions and reactions in a constant 'stream of consciousness'. It can be exhausting, this is one .. yes one!! .. paragraph ...

'She looked up - what demon possessed him, her youngest, her cherished? - and saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfully shabby. Their entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were all over the floor; but then what was the point, she asked herself, of buying good chairs to let them spoil up here all through the winter when the house, with only one old woman to see to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind; the rent was precisely twopence halfpenny; the children loved it; it did her husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his library and his lectures and his disciples; and there was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables whose London life of service was done - they did well enough here; and a photograph or two, and books. Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her, and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: "For her whose wishes must be obeyed" ... "The happier Helen of our days" ... disgraceful to say, she had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia ("My dear, stand still", she said) - neither of those could one send to the Lighthouse. At a certain moment, she supposed, the house would become so shabby that something must be done. If they could be taught to wipe their feet and not bring the beach in with them - that would be something. Crabs, she had to allow, if Andrew really wished to dissect them, or if Jasper believed that one could make soup from seaweed, one could not prevent it; or Rose's objects - shells, reeds, stones; for they were gifted, her children, but all in quite different ways. And the result of it was, she sighed, taking in the whole room from floor to ceiling, as she held the stocking against James's leg, that things got shabbier and got shabbier summer after summer. The mat was fading; the wallpaper was flapping. You couldn't tell anymore that those were roses on it. Still, if every door in a house is left perpetually open, and no lockmaker in the whole of Scotland can mend a bolt, things must spoil. What was the use of flinging a green Cashmere shawl over the edge of a picture frame? In two weeks it would be the colour of pea soup. But it was the doors that annoyed her; every door was left open. She listened. The drawing-room door was open; the hall door was open; it sounded as if the bedroom doors were open; and certainly the window on the landing was open, for that she had opened herself. That windows should be open, and doors shut - simple as it was, could none of them remember it? She would go into the maids' bedrooms at night and find them sealed like ovens, except for Marie's, the Swiss girl, who would rather go without a bath than fresh air, but then at home, she had said, "the mountains are so beautiful." She had said that last night looking out of the windows with tears in her eyes. "The mountains are so beautiful." Her father was dying there, Mrs Ramsay knew. He was leaving them fatherless. Scolding and demonstrating (how to make a bed, how to open a window, with hands that shut and spread like a Frenchwoman's) all had folded itself quietly about her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the wings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of it's plumage changes from bright steel to soft purple. She had stood there silent for there was nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the recollection - how she had stood there, how the girl had said "At home the mountains are so beautiful", and there was no hope, no hope whatever, she had a spasm of irritation, and speaking sharply, said to James: "Stand still. Don't be tiresome," so that he knew instantly that her severity was real, and straightened his leg and she measured it.'

As I've said before, I had moments of perfect clarity and moments of complete bewilderment which might have frustrated me had I been less well disposed towards the book but I loved the language, her way with words and just the whole ambitiousness of it. This would be a fairly experimental novel if it were written today, to have written it back in the 1920's is nothing short of amazing. It's not a book to be picked up easily or to relax with, but it's definitely a book to make your brain tick. I know I will read it again and again (and hopefully hear it read too)and I hope that with each reading more pieces will fall into place (I'm not so sure that a large glass of Chardonnay wouldn't unlock bits of it previously incomprehensible to me .. I'll have to try it!) It's not going to be for everyone, I can imagine a lot of people just thinking 'what on earth is it about?' and anybody who likes their stories to be plot driven or adventurous will struggle to sustain interest and be probably praying for a catastrophe of some sort just to make 'something happen', but it is lyrical and evocative and so pinpoint accurate at times that it just bowled me over.

I know ...I rhapsodize too much. There's no denying it, it was hard work,and you can't help but think that Virginia spent too much time rolling around in the catnip, but nevertheless I loved it.