I want to say so badly that I loved this book, but I didn't. Words cannot capture how jealous I am of the others here who give it 5 stars. This book never "caught" for me, in that my subconscious was never able to create images of the characters that I could latch on to. I didn't at all expect this book to be so difficult for me, when I found To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway completely manageable. I have no doubt of its genius which is why I give it 3.5 stars even though I didn't enjoy it. I hope that, many years down the line, I can try this book again and love it as much as I know people do. ( )

" How much better is silence; the coffee-cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee-cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. Do not come and worry me with your hints that it is time to shut the shop and be gone. I would willingly give all my money that you should not disturb me but let me sit on and on, silent, alone."

By all means, let me alone to sit in silence and read Virginia Woolf.

This plot-less exploration of lifetime friendships and the fluidity of the characters from childhood to old age offers a deeply involving if difficult reading experience. Woolf's lyrical writing and colors, nature, animals, meals, made it worthwhile and it's best to let [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1439492320l/46114._SY75_.jpg|6057263] wash over the reader without trying too hard to parse meaning. Play-like, [a:Woolf Virginia|19441669|Woolf Virginia|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] takes on identity, mortality, and friendship: in six characters who are perhaps one character based on the author. Bernard, the writer with his phrases, is our anchor, and Louis, is "stone-carved, sculpturesque; Neville, scissor-cutting, exact; Susan with eyes like lumps of crystal; Jinny dancing like a flame, febrile, hot, over dry earth; and Rhoda the nymph of the fountain always wet." The bonds and points of view shift in the soliloquies. There is no dialogue.
I think one of the most enjoyable reviews is Fionnuala's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3219885-the-waves.
I want to read more Woolf, this is said to be the most challenging of her books.

"I felt leap up that old impulse, which has moved me all my life, to be thrown up and down on the roar of other people's voices, singing the same song; to be tossed up and down on the roar of almost senseless merriment, sentiment, triumph, desire."

"Some people go to priests, others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken--I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat."
Quarantined. ( )

This is one of the few experimental novels that I truly love. In my copy from college I think I underlined every other sentence. ( )

Woolf's words are magic and filled with such true beauty and melancholy. Finally reading her later in life continues to be a revelation. ( )