“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.”
To the Lighthouse chronicles the lives of the Ramsay family and their close friends, from the tranquil and motherly Mrs. Ramsay to the tragic and eccentric Mr. Ramsay, and their eight children and varied guests. Woolf uses the three movements of the novel to capture their complex family allegiances and the tensions between men and women at the time. Centered around their visits to the Isle of Skye between 1910 and 1920, the novel is an examination of the quiet, seemingly trivial moments of everyday life. As the world changes drastically around the Ramsays, they too must come to terms with, and hopefully face head on, their capacity to change along with it.
To the Lighthouse is number fifteen on Modern Library’s list of one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century, and it was named as one of the best English-language novels since 1923 by Time magazine.
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“To The Lighthouse plays back and forth between telescopic and microscopic views of nature and human nature. Mrs. Ramsey is both trapped in and pleased in her roles as wife, mother, and hostess. The introspective Mr. Ramsey is consumed with his legacy of long-since-published abstract philosophy. This is a book that cannot be read—or heard—too often.”
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Publishers Weekly (starred review)