'An acute awareness of transience...'

[Adagio]

After watching The Hours (A film about Virginia Woolf) I decided to give To the Lighthouse a go. I have about seventy pages left and I can definitely state that I am gonna be sad when I finish. Woolf's style has me in awe. Her prose is on par with Faulkner and Dostoevsky for power. The critic who stated that Woolf's novel presents 'an acute awareness of transience' couldn't of put it better.

I have started this thread for some novel recommendations. Does anyone know of any other novels/writers that share such a strong representation of the transience of life as To the Lighthouse and also features such a fantastic portrayal of complex characters. Of course there is Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Beckett and Shakespeare but there must be more writers out there that write with a similar outlook. Perhaps writers with a similar impressionistic style as Woolf and Faulkner.

Also, if anyone else enjoys Woolf what other works of hers are worth a read?

[dfloyd]

She is perhaps the only writer of the early 20th century that I find extremely boring. I haven't been able to get through one of her books. Pesonally, I don't know how she can be compared to Faulkner whom I find very interesting and understandable. I found her novel Orlando to be a mish mash of ideas. Mrs Dollop is supposedly her best novel. I wont argue with those who like her, but I find her intolerable. I have a leather-bound copy of To the Light House that I will sell to a Woolf lover for $45.00 (what I paid for it) with free shipping to anwhere in the US.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Well done for liking Woolf Adagio, I’m not being patronising as you surely know, it is just that when I read that you had got 70 pages left I thought you was going to say you hated it! I think Woolf is one of the best British novelists that I have ever read – she writes about nothing so wonderfully! Really you have to read her extreme subtlety, the way she uses little echoes and intimate details throughout her work - she’s a genuine artist in prose.

I would recommend Mrs Dalloway, it is such a fine piece of writing, effortless. Look out for the passing references to time, how Big Ben sounds in the background – marking out a new dawn, the gentle sadness of the text, the odd look and silent expression of the characters who are weighted down by inner burdens, the breakdown of hopes and past memories – it’s wonderful, it is all there in small moments and quiet expressions – if you can be bothered to look.

Of course you are not going to get mad car chases through Paris in Citroen cars, but you are going to get something much more rewarding, if you have the patience and time to fully appreciate her slow and yielding style.

[Paulclem]

Hi Adagio. I liked To The Lighthouse as well. I felt it mimicked the internal consciousness better than anything I had read up to that point.

I really like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. The style is differen in that it is not so much a stream of consciousness as a stream of consciousnesses, albeit narrated by a character who seems to be omniscient, but who is still within the book. The inventiveness and complex layers are brilliant. I also find Orhan Pamuck's books have interesting and complex narrative structures.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Besides fiction, Woolf wrote some pretty good nonfiction, specifically A Room Of One's Own, which is a long essay based on some lectures she delivered at Cambridge University. In it she expounds on women as writers and as characters in stories, and examines the work of several women writers, such as Jane Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot. It's a fascinating work and a good read.

[Barbarous]

Woolf is certainly one of my favorite writers. My favorite Woolf novel has to be The Waves. Anyone who is a fan of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse should consider it. My least favorite novel by her is definitely The Years, where I think she was trying to do something absolutely different from her previous work, a something I did not like. I'm about to start Between the Acts later this year.

[Red-Headed]

Mrs Dollop

Sorry, but that made me laugh out loud!

I quite liked Mrs Dollop though, in a way. I am going to read 'Lighthouse' again I think, one day. Maybe I'll appreciate it more. I must be a bit of a philistine in the true Heineian sense. She does emblematise forms of the inner consciousness well I suppose. I have a copy of Orlando that I have never read. I keep looking at it on the shelf & thinking "maybe it's time to read it". I'm sure its time will come.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Woolf is certainly one of my favorite writers. My favorite Woolf novel has to be The Waves. Anyone who is a fan of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse should consider it. My least favorite novel by her is definitely The Years, where I think she was trying to do something absolutely different from her previous work, a something I did not like. I'm about to start Between the Acts later this year.

Yes The Waves is a very interesting stream of consciousness text which some very beautiful prose, though of course the stream of consciousness style is not always easy to follow, but certainly worth checking out.