It’s been many, many years
since I read this book. I have forgotten the story but I still have a vivid
picture of what it felt and looked like. Researching the book to write this, it
turns out that my reaction is apparently correct. She was writing in what they
call the “stream of consciousness” style. She was trying to give a sense of the
flow of random thoughts and information from the senses that go through your
mind. So that’s what I was supposed to get out of reading it! The story is set
just over 100 years ago. A well-off family have a big holiday on the Scottish
islands: Queen Victoria had made Scottish holidays very popular. Then 10 years
go by in which several characters die. It finishes when the rest of the family
meet up on the island again to fulfil a promise to visit the lighthouse. I
think about it every time I see a lighthouse when I visit Scotland. It came
back to me recently when I discovered that the father is based on Virginia
Woolf’s own father, Leslie Stephen, who was a professor at Cambridge University
as well as being one of England’s best ever mountaineers.
