To the Lighthouse

Book excerpt: This landmark work of modernist literature explores the inner lives of a typical English family while vividly exploring the nature of loss and memory. Following her celebrated masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf continues to develop her groundbreaking stream-of-consciousness technique in To the Lighthouse. Every summer, the Ramsey family returns to the Isle of Skye for a tranquil holiday, where the imposing lighthouse seems to promise everlasting constancy. But as their idyllic holiday confronts the realities of World War I, the Ramseys must also face the inescapable nature of change. A profound evocation of marriage, parenthood, aging, and grief, To the Lighthouse is regarded as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.