There were little daily miracles illuminations matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. Theres the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay their eight children and assorted holiday guests. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse Woolf examines tensions and allegiances and shows the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life that seemingly could go on forever. But as time winds its way through their lives the Ramsays face alone and together the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumphthe human capacity for change. A moving portrait in miniature of family life To the Lighthouse also has profoundly universal implications giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other. Radiant as To the Lighthouse is in its beauty there could never be a mistake about it here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality it is itself a vision of reality.Eudora Welty from the Introduction show more