In the final section, "The Lighthouse", some of the remaining Ramsays and other guests return to their summer home ten years after the events of Part I. Mr. Ramsay finally plans on taking the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with daughter Cam(illa) and son James (the remaining Ramsay children are virtually unmentioned in the final section). The trip almost does not happen, as the children are not ready, but they eventually set off. As they travel, the children are silent in protest at their father for forcing them to come along. However, James keeps the sailing boat steady and rather than receiving the harsh words he has come to expect from his father, he hears praise, providing a rare moment of empathy between father and son; Cam's attitude towards her father changes also, from resentment to eventual admiration. The middle section of the book highlights the unrelenting passing of time. Despite the impact these characters have made on us as readers, time will do its dirty business of changing all that we have known. War intrudes, life’s challenges interfere. What remains is a house, the land. Human lives are transitory. Braden Wright makes this somewhat dark book come alive with his narration. He keeps the book moving at a fast pace and sometimes while I was listening an hour would go by and I would not even realize it. Amy is struggling with her mothers death and when her father tells her they are going to a small town to help wrap up a missing persons case for his job, she ends up coming along. Amy meets Ryan in the most bizarre way, but its like the universe is pulling the two of them together. Ryan has made Amy forget about the depression she has been in since her mothers death. He shows her around his home town, his ranch, and they bond over the fact that they both have lost their mother. There is a lot more to the story, but you really need to read this one for yourself. I loved the relationship between Amy and Ryan, as well as the ones that they each had with their fathers and their growth that occurred throughout the book. Running parallel to this storyline is the lighthouse and the question of whether or not it is haunted, and I enjoyed this plot equally as much as the other one. It also contained a nice surprise of magical realism that I thought was additive to the story.

The lighthouse of the book is Godrevy near St. Ives in Cornwall (where the author actually summered). The main character is a beautiful woman “in full,” her eight children and husband and guests gathered around her at a summer vacation cottage. Fourteen people in all at dinner, one a scholar friend of her husband who is in love with her, plus cook and maids. Thank you to Net Galley & Beacon Press for giving me the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book and give it a fair review. Fast forward to 2019. My friend, Srđan, was reading To The Lighthouse; his excitement was contagious, so I decided to revisit To The Lighthouse. I'm so glad I did. Revisiting this book was a revelation. Woolf's father began renting Talland House in St. Ives, in 1882, shortly after Woolf's own birth. The house was used by the family as a family retreat during the summer for the next ten years. The location of the main story in To the Lighthouse, the house on the Hebridean island, was formed by Woolf in imitation of Talland House. Many actual features from St Ives Bay are carried into the story, including the gardens leading down to the sea, the sea itself, and the lighthouse. [15]Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group', an informal collective of artists and writers that exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay.

Part III: The Lighthous, In the final section, "The Lighthouse", some of the remaining Ramsays and other guests return to their summer home ten years after the events of Part I. Mr Ramsay finally plans on taking the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with daughter Cam(illa) and son James (the remaining Ramsay children are virtually unmentioned in the final section). The trip almost does not happen, as the children are not ready, but they eventually set off. As they travel, the children are silent in protest at their father for forcing them to come along. However, James keeps the sailing boat steady and rather than receiving the harsh words he has come to expect from his father, he hears praise, providing a rare moment of empathy between father and son; Cam's attitude towards her father changes also, from resentment to eventual admiration. ... Let me explain: for me the writing just didn’t covey anything of much importance. Sure, you could talk about Woolf’s innovative style and how important this book is in the formation of English literature as we know it today; it clearly has impacted the novel as an art form. And it adheres to Woolf’s arguments in her essay titled Modern Fiction. It’s about realism; it’s about capturing a multitude of perspectives and voices regarding the complexities of perception and human experiences. It acts to show how different people think in very different ways. And that’s it.

His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at their feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet." When I first read this novel, I was like young James Ramsay, eagerly hoping to get To The Lighthouse.