To The Lighthouse

Last night my book club had our annual Christmas party along with our monthly book club discussion. The book this month was "To The Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf. This book is on most, if not all, the lists of the greatest modern literature. I was excited to read it until I started reading it. Lordy, how it did drag on. Half of the book is about a single dinner party. A family with 8 children are at a seaside home and planning to go to the lighthouse the next day. The father is against the idea and the kids and mother are for it. As each person at the dinner party speaks, they go into a steam of consciousness discussion about their feelings and why they're upset with someone else at the table and the possible motivations for other people to act the way they do. We'd get one or two sentences spoken aloud and the rest of the chapter would be all about what was going on in their head. And we had some messed up heads here. Virginia Woolf based this family on her own family and I can see why she battled depression all her life and ended her life with suicide. This family needed help. I'm not sure whether that help would be counseling or some 12 steps or what but help is what they needed. By the time I was halfway through the book I was really frustrated. Talk, talk, talk about going to the lighthouse and they don't go there! Why name the book "Going To The Lighthouse" if you never go to the freaking lighthouse? A single day takes up all but one chapter. The last chapter includes 10 years of time. As you might be able to tell, I wasn't happy with this book. Now, after discussing it in book club, I like it better. This book was published just after World War I, the war to end all wars. People were thinking creatively and with innovation. After brushing close with death across Europe, people became bolder. They wanted to break out of the ruts they were in. Virginia Woolf's book is a departure from the typical plot driven book. Just like Picasso and Salvadore Dali departed from the typical artwork of the time, Virginia Woolf departed from the typical fiction of her time.