To The Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf's most accomplished novel, and her most autobiographical. It tells of one summer spent by the Ramsay family and their friends in their holiday home in Scotland. Offshore stands the lighthouse, remote, inaccessible, an eternal presence in a changing world. A projected visit to the lighthouse forms the heart of this extraordinary novel which, through the minds of the various characters, explores the nature of time, memory, transience and eternity. The style has the clarity of a diamond which shimmers in the mind, making To The Lighthouse one of the most unforgettable novels of the twentieth century.
British actress Juliet Stevenson has enjoyed a ripple of prestige in this country ever since she appeared in the sleeper TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY. Here she exhibits her critically acclaimed qualities--her lovely voice, perfect enunciation, earnestness and musical phrasing. She not only understands, but communicates with precision the overt and subtextual meaning of Woolf's prose. Unfortunately, she also exhibits qualities that keep this reviewer from becoming one of her admirers. She is unctuous to the point of pretentiousness, thus traducing the spirit of a book that strives so bravely for pretentionless psychological truth. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine
AudioFile Magazine...
“Juliet Stevenson exhibits her critically acclaimed qualities--her lovely voice, perfect enunciation, earnestness and musical phrasing. She not only understands, but communicates with precision the overt and subtextual meaning of Woolf's prose.”
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