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Title details for To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - Wait list

To the Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf
Gabrielle de Cuir
Audiobook
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Wait time: About 2 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks

"And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves."

To the Lighthouse chronicles the lives of the Ramsay family and their close friends, from the tranquil and motherly Mrs. Ramsay to the tragic and eccentric Mr. Ramsay, and their eight children and varied guests. Woolf uses the three movements of the novel to capture their complex family allegiances and the tensions between men and women at the time. Centered around their visits to the Isle of Skye between 1910 and 1920, the novel is an examination of the quiet, seemingly trivial moments of everyday life. As the world changes drastically around the Ramsays, they too must come to terms with, and hopefully face head on, their capacity to change along with it.

To the Lighthouse is number fifteen on Modern Library's list of one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century, and it was named as one of the best English-language novels since 1923 by Time magazine.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 8, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9798212546324
      • File size: 276986 KB
      • Duration: 09:37:03

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      British actress Juliet Stevenson has enjoyed a ripple of prestige in this country ever since she appeared in the sleeper TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY. Here she exhibits her critically acclaimed qualities--her lovely voice, perfect enunciation, earnestness and musical phrasing. She not only understands, but communicates with precision the overt and subtextual meaning of Woolf's prose. Unfortunately, she also exhibits qualities that keep this reviewer from becoming one of her admirers. She is unctuous to the point of pretentiousness, thus traducing the spirit of a book that strives so bravely for pretentionless psychological truth. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking novel about the vacationing Ramsay family and their relationship with their guests and each other is effortlessly voiced by acclaimed British actress Eileen Atkins. As members of the Ramsay family fall away from each other--through normal familial difficulties heightened by the tragedy of war--Atkins does a superb job conveying each character's individual feelings and struggles. In the character of Lily, the painter intrigued by the entire Ramsay family (although mostly by its gentle matriarch), there is a delicate strength that comes through. Atkins has plenty of experience reading the works of Woolf (she also recorded Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One's Own for Penguin Audiobooks) and is a joy to listen to in this recording, as well. R.A.P. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      This classic character study takes on new life with Juliet Stevenson's masterful narration. She lends cohesion to the stream-of-consciousness passages, making them easier to follow. As Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe explore life's questions, Stevenson applies vocal traits to each character, reflecting personality and values. Both women speak in clear, kind tones, while gruffness captures Mr. Ramsay's essence and sarcasm dominates Mr. Tansley's. Light, airy notes accompany the children's words. Young James Ramsay's lighthouse journey and Lily's painting of Mrs. Ramsay tie the book's opening to its conclusion ten years later. Longed for in the beginning, both endeavors are completed in the end, bringing resolution to the characters' inner struggles. J.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 6, 2006
      It's wondrous to listen to a fine reading of a long-loved novel. Leishman makes masterly use of volume, timbre and resonance to distinguish between characters and draw us into the emotional swings and vibrations of the internal musings of each. She creates not a new but a more nuanced reading, following the interwoven streams of consciousness in a British English that lends authenticity to each voice. Leishman swims smoothly through Woolf's sentences that ebb and flow with numerous parenthetical thoughts and fresh images. These passages are interspersed with quick, sharp, simple sentences that gain strength in contrast. Leishman also draws our attention to Woolf's poetic prose: her rhythms and images, her use of hard consonants in monosyllabic words in counterpoint to long, soft, dreamy words and phrases. To The Lighthouse
      plays back and forth between telescopic and microscopic views of nature and human nature. Mrs. Ramsey is both trapped in and pleased in her roles as wife, mother and hostess. The introspective Mr. Ramsey is consumed with his legacy of long-since-published abstract philosophy. This is a book that cannot be read—or heard—too often.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 28, 2008
      British actress Juliet Stevenson makes for a better reader of Woolf's words than Nicole Kidman's Oscar-winning turn as Woolf in The Hours
      . Stevenson carefully sorts through Woolf's famously tangled modernist masterpiece about the interior lives of a well-to-do British family, and the ways in which the First World War permanently damaged European society. She reads in an amplified hush, her exaggeratedly formal British diction adding poignancy to the sense of dislocation and disorder that marks the book's transition from pre- to postwar. Her reading is quietly, carefully precise, and that precision is a solid complement to Woolf's own measured, inward-looking prose.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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