To the Lighthouse cover art

To the Lighthouse

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To the Lighthouse

By: Virginia Woolf
Narrated by: Nicole Kidman
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About this listen

To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.

Split into three parts, the story observes Mrs. Ramsay, Mr. Ramsey, and their children at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye. While the novel follows seemingly trivial events between the family members, the plot takes a backseat to philosophical introspection, which gave the novel its fame as an icon of modernist literature. The Ramseys’ quest to recapture meaning creates a powerful allegory of man’s impermanent battle with the tangible world.

©1927 Virginia Woolf (P)2012 Audible, Inc. Classics
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Virginia wonderful, as always, narration a huge disappointment, very bland, no life bought to the story sadly.

Sadly let down by Nicole K

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I'll never get over how Virginia Woolf can extract, bottle and stopper the mood of a whole life in a brief moment. Originally, the plot of this novel never appealed to me. A delayed family trip to a lighthouse is hardly thrilling synopsis stuff.

I'd read Orlando, Mrs Dalloway and The Waves first. But I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I'd place it as a close second to Orlando as my favourite Woolf work.

Fair warning: it is slow. All of Woolf's novels are by our poor attention standards, and that is a big part of their beauty. It's like watching a moth get slowly caught in amber.

Nicole Kidman is an excellent narrator. Her voice is clear and she adds a thoughtful element all her own to Virginia's beautiful prose. You have the feeling that she loves this book, these characters and their frailties.

A minimalist classic

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not my cup of tea! iI found the narration also very slow and tedious. Did not finish.

slow

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I am supposed to like this. But I really don’t.
Woolf if clearly intelligent but she bores me to death. I felt nothing.
She hated James Joyce and you can understand why they are polar opposite. He sees the absurd in everything. Woolf just comes across as a bitter little baggy hag

No sense of humour

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