The Waves
“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
Innovative and deeply poetic, The Waves is often regarded as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. It begins with six children—three boys and three girls—playing in a garden by the sea, and follows their lives as they grow up, experience friendship and love, and grapple with the death of their beloved friend Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing their inner lives: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation.
Innovative and deeply poetic, The Waves is often regarded as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. It begins with six children—three boys and three girls—playing in a garden by the sea, and follows their lives as they grow up, experience friendship and love, and grapple with the death of their beloved friend Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing their inner lives: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation.
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Community Reviews
Oh, it's written in stream of consciousness form, AND in poetry form. Two of my least favorite things!
The story of six schoolmates - three women, three men - and their internal thoughts about events, life, death, themselves, the world, etc. One of their group dies in an accident, which leads to all sorts of inner turmoil (I guess). You do get a sense, after a while, of their different personalities coming through, but it's still confusing as there's no clear delineation between who's speaking. I mean, I know, it will say who's speaking, but then it goes on for pages & pages, and you forget, after struggling through the poetic language, who the hell is talking!
I feel like I just finished a very long, difficult homework assignment, but I can't say I enjoyed it.
The story of six schoolmates - three women, three men - and their internal thoughts about events, life, death, themselves, the world, etc. One of their group dies in an accident, which leads to all sorts of inner turmoil (I guess). You do get a sense, after a while, of their different personalities coming through, but it's still confusing as there's no clear delineation between who's speaking. I mean, I know, it will say who's speaking, but then it goes on for pages & pages, and you forget, after struggling through the poetic language, who the hell is talking!
I feel like I just finished a very long, difficult homework assignment, but I can't say I enjoyed it.
This was my first Virginia Woolf novel. By definition, it really isn't even a novel. It was an experiment with writing the streams of consciousness of the characters at specific moments in time rather than the traditional writing of plot and dialogue between the characters.
I was intrigued by the concept and idea of following the characters from childhood to death and found it interesting to see the character's thoughts evolve from distracted observations of childhood to deeper contemplation as adults, but from the first sentence it was clear that this would not be an easy read. I had to work hard at placing myself in the mind of each character and the language was difficult for me interpret; It is more like poetry than prose.
If you like poetry and content that requires deliberate effort on the part of the reader, this may be a great choice for you. For me, it required more effort than I wanted to put into it and finishing it became more of a personal challenge than it was for the enjoyment. This is one I'd like to come back to in the future and see if I can do better with it.
I was intrigued by the concept and idea of following the characters from childhood to death and found it interesting to see the character's thoughts evolve from distracted observations of childhood to deeper contemplation as adults, but from the first sentence it was clear that this would not be an easy read. I had to work hard at placing myself in the mind of each character and the language was difficult for me interpret; It is more like poetry than prose.
If you like poetry and content that requires deliberate effort on the part of the reader, this may be a great choice for you. For me, it required more effort than I wanted to put into it and finishing it became more of a personal challenge than it was for the enjoyment. This is one I'd like to come back to in the future and see if I can do better with it.
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