To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Published as late as 1927, the novel To the Lighthouse is Woolf’s masterpiece. The narrator of this stream of consciousness novel is anonymous. The storyline switches frequently from the perceptions of one character to those of the others. Set in the years immediately preceding and following World War I, the common struggle that each of the characters faces is to bring meaning and order to the pandemonium of life.
The tale centers on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action. With its characters based on her own parents and siblings, To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of all Woolf’s novels.
The novel is divided into three unequal sections: “The Window,” “Time Passes,” and “The Lighthouse.” Each section is split into stream-of-consciousness offerings from diverse narrators. “The Window” opens just before the start of World War I. Time passes more rapidly as the novel enters the “Time Passes” segment. War breaks out across Europe. In “The Lighthouse” section, time returns to the slow detail of shifting points of view, similar in style to “The Window.”
The important characters include Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe and James Ramsey and the Lighthouse is the metaphor that joins them all. It stands as a compelling symbol of this lack of attainability. To the Lighthouse exemplifies both Woolf’s style and many of her concerns as a novelist as she offers some of her most insightful explorations of the workings of the human perception as it observes, scrutinizes, feels and interacts.