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A review by tomatoes127
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
5.0
I'm not exactly sure how to talk about The Waves without relying heavily on cliche, soundbite phrases (rather ironically) so here goes nothing anyway.
The Waves is certainly not a traditional novel with a strong plot and clear resolution. It's structure focuses around the endless cycles of life. Some are rather obvious, days, years, seasons, the waves on the beach. Others are more abstract like the cycle many people find where they seek some high goal, manage to find some kind of Enlightenment for a moment, only to find they lose sight of it and end up no happier than they started.
Each of the characters has their own insecurities and their own ideals which they pursue throughout their lives. Really it is together that we get to see all aspects of a human life. Also, it is in the coming together and moving apart (another cycle) of these friends that we see what I think is one of the major themes of the novel, that being a struggle between, on the one hand, finding connection with others against pursuing individualistic ambitions on the other.
This book has some of Virginia Woolf's most beautiful writing, especially in the sections describing the path of the sun through the sky on one day and it's effect on the world. It is perhaps not my personal favourite, that would have to be To The Lighthouse, with its more grounded story, but The Waves is certainly a masterpiece of modernist experimentation.
There you go, all my thoughts, incoherently presented
The Waves is certainly not a traditional novel with a strong plot and clear resolution. It's structure focuses around the endless cycles of life. Some are rather obvious, days, years, seasons, the waves on the beach. Others are more abstract like the cycle many people find where they seek some high goal, manage to find some kind of Enlightenment for a moment, only to find they lose sight of it and end up no happier than they started.
Each of the characters has their own insecurities and their own ideals which they pursue throughout their lives. Really it is together that we get to see all aspects of a human life. Also, it is in the coming together and moving apart (another cycle) of these friends that we see what I think is one of the major themes of the novel, that being a struggle between, on the one hand, finding connection with others against pursuing individualistic ambitions on the other.
This book has some of Virginia Woolf's most beautiful writing, especially in the sections describing the path of the sun through the sky on one day and it's effect on the world. It is perhaps not my personal favourite, that would have to be To The Lighthouse, with its more grounded story, but The Waves is certainly a masterpiece of modernist experimentation.
There you go, all my thoughts, incoherently presented