Miss S gave me a beautiful copy of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
I just wish I could have liked the story (if there was one) better.
The story started well enough, in that I understood the first sentence. "Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay, in answer to her son asking if they could go to the lighthouse tomorrow.
Several chapters in, however, I'd begun re-reading sentences, then paragraphs and eventually, I went back to the beginning of the book and started again because I kept losing focus. One sentence was 253 words long. Seriously! Who can concentrate for that long? Not me - and another clue that I'd lost interest in the story was that I'd started counting how many words there were in sentences. I freely admit I was struggling.
I just couldn't figure out what the plot was. All of the action, at least in the first half of the story, took place on a single day at the Ramsay's holiday place on the Isle of Skye. Young James Ramsay asked to go to the lighthouse tomorrow. Mrs Ramsay, his mother, agreed, so long as the weather was fine (refer to the first sentence of the book). Mr Ramsay, James' father said the weather would be crap and that there would be no visits to the lighthouse the next day. Young James got cross with his know-it-all father and Mrs Ramsay got cross with their toad-eating house-guest, who agreed with everything that Mr Ramsay said about the weather.
Other people wandered around the garden or the beach, painting the scenery and admiring Mrs Ramsay, who was very beautiful. Everything that happened came straight out of various character's heads and I found this exhausting (what goes on in my own head is enough for me).
None of the characters seemed to understand each other, and they didn't appear to like or respect each other either.
I got to the half-way point and gave this up. I don't know if anyone got the lighthouse the next day or not and frankly, I don't care. I expect there are people who 'get' Virginia Woolf's work, but I don't seem to be one of them.
To the Lighthouse was book five of my second Classics Club challenge to read 50 classics before my challenge end date of September 08, 2028.
The following photo is the lighthouse on Griffiths Island at Port Fairy in Victoria, Australia that I managed to 'get to' some years ago.
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