The Waves, by Virginia Woolf
This was a really interesting book. It wasn't really a novel. It didn't quite have a story. It felt a lot like poetry. And at times it read like a play. I was tempted to label it as 'uncategorised' when setting up this post!
But in spite of its refusal to conform to any conventional form or genre (a feature which really annoyed me in Dorothy Richardson's Journey to Paradise), I quite liked it overall.
At its heart, 'The Waves' is about six people growing up. The six main characters - Bernard, Louis, Neville, Susan, Jinny and Rhoda - appear first as very young children, and progress gradually throughout the book into late middle age. This narrative, I have to say, was not the most thrilling (so if you're looking for a ripping storyline, don't read this book). But what made it very compelling was the way in which it was told.
First of all, I enjoyed the structure. The 'story' of the six main characters was split into nine phases, each one associated with a different phase of life. Within these episodes, the perspective flicked between each of the six characters, so that it felt almost like a series of dramatic monologues, exploring their evolving identities and changing circumstances as they grow.
In between each of these phases was a descriptive passage printed in italics, painting the journey of the sun from dawn to dusk. I liked this, because we had the tales of these characters and their rise and fall from birth to aging, interspersed with the most beautiful evocation of a passing day from sunrise to sunset. It was essentially one big poetic extended metaphor, and I loved that. The way Woolf alternated between her characters and the natural world shone a light on some beautiful parallels: a human life rises and sets like the sun; a whole life is like a day; Nature and man are backdrops to each other...
The other interesting thing about the structure was the change in the final section. All the monologue-like sections featured all the characters, apart from the last one. To conclude the book, the narrative was handed to Bernard, and I thought this was an intriguing choice because Bernard is a writer (he spends much of the book collecting words and phrases in his notebook for later use and idolising Byron - relatable...). This was interesting because part of Woolf's purpose with 'The Waves' was to communicate very broad and abstract ideas in a very loose and lyrical way - notions that are hard to express in words, and that cannot be bound in the form of a novel. She was questioning whether it was even possible for words and literature to capture the depth and intricacy of human life. And yet, to which character did she give the final word? The writer. It's almost ironic.
Secondly, I adored the use of language. The stream of consciousness is not my favourite technique (this was the absolute epitome of stream-of-consciousness writing, with rambling sentences that tangled me up in their many clauses, and a distinct lack of paragraph breaks just inviting me to lose my place...), but I managed to look past it. This word wolf could not resist Woolf's words. Her imagery describing the natural scenery was exquisite; take these gorgeous quotes from the sunrise on page one:
The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it ... the sky cleared as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp ... flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire ... gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it into a million atoms of soft blue ... the sun sharpened the walls of the house ... an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold
The final thing I really liked was the title. The Waves. It's a good title because it reflects the setting; every section of the book, both the main episodes and the italicised interjections, was linked by the presence of the sea in some capacity. But it also works because of its meaning; the waves of the ocean are an illustration of the ebb and flow of the natural world, and this perfectly mirrors what Woolf was evoking in her depictions of the sun and of the passing of time. And finally, it reflects the nature of the writing itself - the whole book flows in a stream of consciousness, there's a rhythm to the prose like the rippling of water, and the fluid alternations between dialogue and description are like turning tides, or the waves coming and going on the shore.
Overall, this was good. Sometimes it took quite a lot of concentration to navigate the stream of consciousness, but the language was stunning and I loved the nature metaphors that underpinned the whole thing. And though it took a little while to grip me - because there wasn't much of a story - I soon realised that I could love it a lot more if I stopped expecting it to be like a novel. It's not a novel. It's a piece of art, and the medium is words.