Punch. July 27, 1927, p.84.
Again in To the Lighthouse (HOGARTH PRESS) VIRGINIA
WOOLF pursues her desperately analytical, fourth-dimensional
manner which needs more concentration in the reader
than most of us are perhaps willing or able to bring. The
Ramsay family and their guests propose to visit a lighthouse.
They don’t because it rains. Ten years after, a
war intervening and the beautiful Mrs. Ramsay having
meanwhile died in one of the author’s most casual parentheses,
the widower and two of his children make the voyage.
And that is all the story. The rest is a hunt for and a delicate
exposure of the springs of action and the wayward thoughts
of a baker’s dozen of characters. It all betrays a fine intelligence
and keen perceptions, but it is more subtle than
lucid, and it is extremely easy to wander down one of the
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dark avenues of Mrs. WOOLF’S sentences and get
completely lost, unless you have a Bloomsbury intelligence.
The portraits of the lovely middle-aged Mrs. Ramsay and her
distinguished, vain, impetuous husband are extremely well-
embroidered on the vague background. The general pattern
emerges as they do in a jig-saw puzzle. Undoubtedly an
interesting if an exacting method.