To the Lighthouse -- Virginia Woolf, Paperback

"There were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark."

To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. There's the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf examines tensions and allegiances and shows the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life that seemingly could go on forever.

But as time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and together, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph--the human capacity for change. A moving portrait in miniature of family life, To the Lighthouse also has profoundly universal implications, giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other.

"Radiant as To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality."--Eudora Welty, from the Introduction

Author: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Harvest Books
Published: 12/27/1989
Pages: 209
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.12h x 5.32w x 0.55d
ISBN: 9780156907392
Age Range: 14-UP

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 7.2
Point Value: 12
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 74078 / To the Lighthouse


Review Citation(s):
Entertainment Weekly 06/26/2009 pg. 90
Entertainment Weekly 06/15/2012 pg. 84