I read this book like I eat chocolate, always intending to indulge in just a little bit, then finding myself inexorably unwilling to stop. This was not due to any gripping plot twists, not to witty repartee or romantic involvements that I just had to find the end to. In fact, a common issue taken with Virginia Woolf’s writing is the way in which plot is perhaps passed over in favour of examining the minutiae, holding a microscope to a human emotion or, as in the central section in this book, the manner in which a house decays. Strangely, though I would generally describe myself as the finicky type of reader that requires consistency and depth in my stories, this didn’t bother me. I was more than content to sink back into the warm-bath quality of this book and this, I think, was due to the characters.
To The Lighthouse is written in what I’ve heard described as “dense prose” or “stream of consciousness”, but what I think of as the literary equivalent to perching in the back of someone else’s mind, watching the to-ing and fro-ing of their thoughts and fears all from behind their eyes. The closeness with characters that this way of writing gave me, the understanding of them that I felt I had, is the thing that made them so engrossing.
Alongside reading the novel, do try to watch this critical reading of the novel: