To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf*****

Reading dates: probably April 2025 – 17 April 2026

On a walk in Motherwell one Saturday. morning, Neil and I decided to read this book together, aloud. When we began, I noticed something about its rhythm did something peculiar to me. Perhaps because of its intricacy, Neil decided he did not want to read it aloud anymore and I continued on my own. I am so glad I did. What happens in the middle of this book, that long chapter of the Donner party, is one of the best prose I have ever read and, if course, anchors what is to come after.

There is so much in To the Lighthouse, so many amazing revelations, all treated not only with words (which are not particularly difficult or strange) but with cadence, with musicality, with rhythm. So much beauty, so many insights into thought, emotion, character … Those square brackets are to die for and, of course, there is the trademark jumps and changes in the narrative, gentle, easeful, as if the reader was breath entering different bodies. I have never read anything like it. I adored it.