Reviews

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

aroreads's review against another edition

reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

saintry's review against another edition

5.0

i learned a lot of new words

sonia_a_pinto's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

 Obra singular sobre a brevidade da vida. A ler e reler... 

nebelung's review against another edition

4.0

Very difficult to rate or describe, but it read like artwork.

rileycshort's review against another edition

4.0

Overall, a very thought-provoking book. Every other sentence had sone sort of figurative language or vague reference to something else. While this made for beautiful writing and amazing imagery, it also made me have to focus really hard when reading in order to actually understand what was going on. Which is not a bad thing and is to be expected from an author like Virginia Woolf, but it did make me take a while to finish it.

cabble's review against another edition

3.0

The writing is beautiful, lyrical and very vivid, but I found it difficult to properly distinguish the voices of the six characters and as such the book became a bit of a slog, which is a criticism only of my ability to read.

kathrynharrison1982's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

gimmemoore's review against another edition

5.0

One of the most unique and incredible books I've ever read. It took me a long time to get through but only because there was so much to take in.

femaletor's review against another edition

4.0

Virginia Woolf definitely experimented in this novel and it was such a different and enjoyable experience to follow the six friends in their six different lives that somehow always end up in the tight friendship.

silentlysings's review against another edition

2.0

This book taught me that, while I enjoy quotes by certain authors, it doesn’t mean I will enjoy reading an entire book from them.

While the prose was gorgeous at times (I definitely savoured some bits of the imagery), overall it felt tedious, repetitive and almost pretentious to me. If this wasn’t written by the widely-acclaimed Virginia Woolf, I wonder if the reviews would be different.
I couldn't really relate to the characters (which feels important in a character driven book, to me), save for Rhoda I guess. Poor thing.

tl;dr maybe it’s just a case of “it’s not you, it’s me”