I feel self conscious reviewing "classics". I worry I'm not 'getting it' and will look ignorant. But then, I also feel that if I'm not getting it, that says something too. So, here we go. Bear with me.
There are some spoilers in this review. But this book was published in 1927, so you've had 98 years to read it before reading my spoilers.
What I knew before reading the book - it was written by Virginia Woolf, a female author often described as a key feminist writer. No surprise then that To The Lighthouse is written almost exclusively through the point of view of female protagonists, mainly Mrs Ramsay, the mother of eight who narrates the first chunk of the book. Male characters are given short shrift, variously described as shallow, prickly, idealistic, boastful and with sensitive egos.
The story starts with Mr and Mrs Ramsay on holiday on the Isle of Skye with their eight children and another half dozen assorted guests plus serving staff. It's evening. One of Mrs Ramsay's sons asks her if they can go to the lighthouse the next day. Mr Ramsay says no because the weather forecast is bad. Mrs Ramsay is silently annoyed at her husband for dismissively crushing her son's hopes.
That takes up the first sixty pages. I was beginning to suspect the title was misleading and the family weren't going to go to the lighthouse.
There was, however, a surprise reference to Cardiff - as a venue where Mr Ramsay was going to take his lecture tour. So, it wasn't all unspoken angst between the married couple.
Mrs Ramsay oscillates between a dark pessimism about marriage and progeny, and then expends a lot of energy engineering opportunities for her house guests to get together. There is a proposal as two people are successfully coupled, and then she is on to thinking about the next match she could make.
I had my hackles raised by some passing references to Anna Karenina. Fortunately Mrs Ramsay stands in stark contrast to Anna. For one thing, Mrs Ramsay seems much more realistic about life and finds joy in the things around her instead of mooning away over some idea that love is "out there".
And then, just when we've got to know Mrs Ramsay, she unexpectedly dies, in a throwaway paragraph at the end of a chapter. I don't know if the author got bored of her, or what. But it's a sudden - and bold - shift in the story.
What follows is a brief series of vignettes, as the local cleaning lady tries to maintain the holiday home over several years. In the same way that the house declines, so too, Mrs Ramsay's idealised visions of the future are shown to come to naught. One son Andrew, who was supposed to become a famous mathematician, is killed by a shell during the war. A daughter, Prue, who is supposed to grow into a true beauty, dies due to pregnancy complications. The couple who got engaged on Skye get trapped in a loveless marriage.
The message seems to be that whatever our hopes for the future, life gets in the way. It's pessimistic in the extreme and more nihilistic than I expected.
The book ends with the remaining members of the family returning to Skye. The kid who wanted to go to the lighthouse finally gets to go, even though by this point he is a pouting teenager who really doesn't want to go. They arrive at the lighthouse but before they get out of the boat the book ends.
Final point - the cover art. This book was part of a set of ten 'classics' that I was given several years ago. The cover art is deeply uninspiring, although after I read the book it felt very apt. (It doesn't show a lighthouse!) Then a few days after I finished the book, I saw a copy with a very different, and much nicer, cover that makes it look like a completely different type of book!
(I was tempted to buy it but decided that would be silly.)
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