Not Your Average Beachy Book

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

The literary gal’s beach accessories.

I read this to continue the experiment I began with Katherine Mansfield. I had thought I didn’t like her writing, but all it took for me to fall in love was a re-reading five years later. The results of this (possibly continuing) experiment are, to my surprise, that I am now a fan of Virginia Woolf too. To the Lighthouse is an incredible book and very innovative. The whole stream of consciousness thing is also quite readable as long as you spare a little extra effort in concentration! As long as I paid attention, I could follow it. The atmosphere of the novel is vivid, nostalgic, just downright beautiful really.

Virginia Woolf has made me miss the sea… and my childhood.

Virginia and the Seaside

This is the image I have in my head whilst I read To The Lighthouse. The writing is beautiful;

“So she looked over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind.”

“So with all the lamps put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers.”

“The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it.”

Photograph by riö scarlett.