To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
read: 2011
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #15, Guardian 1000 Novels

Modern Library named To the Lighthouse the number 15 book of the 20th century, making it the greatest book written by a female author over that time period.

The novel is considered an example of "stream-of-consciousness," but that doesn't mean it's the incoherent internal ramblings sometimes found in Faulkner or Pynchon.  Woolf's prose is very readable; she just takes us into the heads of the various characters in the book, exploring the inner workings of their psychologies in a way even they don't understand.  The characters in To the Lighthouse are flawed and insecure, not in overt damaging ways but in subtle ways the undermine their own happiness and that of those close to them.

The novel not only has very little plot, it's almost deliberately anti-plot.  The story takes place over two days years apart, and little of significance happens either day, while events like the deaths of major characters and the dissolution of marriages occur almost in passing.  The effect is interesting; To the Lighthouse is almost more of a prose poem than a story.