Frances Jeater The Waves (Modern Classics) Genre:Classical Tracing the lives of six friends froom childood to old age, "The Waves" was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental literary powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through ... more »powerful, poetic monologues.« less
Tracing the lives of six friends froom childood to old age, "The Waves" was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental literary powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues.
CD Reviews
This is my favorite book.
Trina T. Brown | 11/16/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I was introduced to Virginia Woolf in college when I took an entire class devoted to her work. Although I had never read any of her work before, I quickly became a fan. My professor saved the best for last - The Waves. This book is the most poetic, most profound, most intimate book I have ever read. No one speaks in this book. You follow the characters' lives from childhood to adulthood by entering their minds and listening to their thoughts. At first it is difficult to figure out what is going on. There is no narration except short poetic passages about the sea and the sun's placement over it preceding each section of the book (and each period of the characters' lives). By the middle of the book, you know who is speaking without reading the name of the character. You know how they think. I strongly encourage anyone who is even slightly curious to buy this book. This small investment can change how you view the world. The Waves takes much longer to get through than some whodunit, but that's the beauty of it. My husband and I read a passage at night before going to bed. It's best when read slowly, with time to reflect after a small amount of pages. You'll be highlighting sentences that make great quotes as you go. What a glorious book!"
Do you think you've read Virginia Woolf?
Trina T. Brown | 10/25/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Even if you've read other Virigina Woolf, you haven't come close to the experience of The Waves. Did you have to read To the Lighthouse for some class back in college? The Waves seems like a totally different author. Perhaps Jacob's Room comes closer, but still The Wave is unique:The whole text is entirely soliloquys in the first person. No 3rd person description, no omniscient narrator, just the opening of quotation marks, one of the few characters begins to speak, then the ending of quotation marks... beginning once more with the opening quotation marks for the next speaker's soliloquy, and so on and on in waves of thought.We follow each speaker from early childhood to old age, and we know them intimately by the book's end. Give the book a chance; at first I could only take three or four *pages* at a time, but also looked forward to these few pages every day. Later, I could easily read more and more, and truly the experience was like "waves" of life, lapping over my consciousness.If you like unique "novels," e.g. Nabokov's Pale Fire (although different it's unique too), this is a must-have. There's nothing else like it, even in Virginia Woolf's body of work.If you can't take the full load of first-person consciousness, but like her dreamy style, then go for her book of short stories. But I recommend keeping the book, and treating yourself, a few pages at a time... you too will feel at the end of a magnificent life's journey by time you follow each character's thoughts to the end."
WAvEs of emotion disolving the "I"
Buzz Advert | Milwaukee | 06/16/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"You have never read a book like this. But don't let that intimidate. This is her most experimental work, but it is still much more accesible than many other modernists. Her sentences and paragraphs are intelligible; it's more the accumulation of pages that might begin to baffle some readers. Woolf obviously requires a good deal of concentration, but her best works are rewarding in a way that many difficult writers are not. (You won't need a professor nearby or a mess of annotations to guide you through dense thickets of allusion-filled, abstract prose.) I consider this to be Woolf's greatest work. Mrs. Dalloway may be a more pleasurable read and more consistently a "masterpiece", but the Waves is often so intense and beautiful that it's devastating. In fact, there are times that one is a bit overwhelmed by the surfeit of emotion, poetic words, unremitting interiority.My Woolf pix in order: 1. Waves 2. Dalloway 3. Jacob's Room 4. A Room of One's Own 5. OrlandoI personally feel that To the Lighthouse is more of a work to be appreciated than liked--it's simply too refined. And I couldn't make it through Between the Acts--too many upper class English people sitting around a table in the country sipping tea and performing their subtle, boring manners.Wait, I can't end on a sour note: Woolf is a bloody delight!"
Is this why she committed suicide?
Catherine Theresa Graciano | South Pole, Antarctica | 11/17/2004
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Although at times I consider myself intelligent, after reading "The Waves," I must now concede to being mediocre in my intellect. Upon finishing the novel, I consulted various criticisms and opinions on the work to find that I missed much of what was portrayed in the book. Therefore, I admit to being ignorant. However, I still believe everyone's response to a work is valuable and this is mine:
Just like many other works by Virginia Woolf, there were moments when I was absolutely swept away by the depth of her narrative and the poignancy of her descriptions. Put simply, she blows my mind and this is why I continue to read her. However, I often wonder if the subconscious mind babble that we encounter everyday is worth repeating. Perhaps there is a reason why we have public presentations and filter out much of what we typically are thinking. Therefore, my response to this novel is undecided. Upon finishing the novel, renditions of Shakespeare's "To be or not to be?" ran through my head. I find Woolf's characters and their ambiguous identities and feelings to be confusing and I feel frustrated by their inability to provide me with an answer to the great questions of life. Of course, I realize that life is supposedly more about the questions than the answers and if the goal of good writing it to provoke conversation and thought, Virginia Woolf certainly has done that here. If the purpose of reading is to somehow see ourselves and our struggles reflected in someone else's writing, then Woolf has accomplished that much. Nevertheless, I found the novel to be frustrating in that Woolf provides very little direction or resolution for the reader. I felt as if I was left hanging in so many ways.
Final verdict (after my convoluted and likewise ambiguous review):
It is certainly worth reading for those moments that resonate with the soul, but don't be surprised if it shakes you up, tosses you around, and then leaves you feeling more bewildered than ever before.
And I still wonder what caused her to kill herself. I wish I had that answer."
A challenge,but worth it!
Trillian | Australia | 10/12/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I loved this book, for both what it says - about life, time and relationships - and for how it says it. It is also true, though, that it is one of her less accessible works, and can occasionally be frustrating in its vagueness. To anyone considering buying this book, DO - it's worth it - 2 things that I learnt, though:1. This is probably not good as an introduction to Virginia Woolf, modernism or 'stream of consciousness' writing - it may be a good idea to read "To The Lighthouse" first.....2. If you're a genuis or an English teacher you may understand this right off, I don't know - but for the rest of us, I think that it's worth a second read, the first to feel the rhythm, and the second to actually understand the message (if that doesn't sound too ridiculous!) - otherwise it is easy to get bogged down and frustrated, as I did it the first time I read it. Every time I reread this book, I discover something new, despite the fact that spent almost a month studying it in depth....Good luck!"
