Book Lovers Series

Book Lovers: Episode 13

Episode 13: To the Lighthouse

December 29, 2020


Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse digs into one family in one place over a span of two very different days, a decade apart. As the Ramsay family spends its day at the blustery northern shore of Scotland, family friend Lily Briscoe attempts to capture the family via painting. Ten years later, what remains of the family returns to the same place, and Lily attempts to complete her painting, although the Ramsays seem to remain just out of reach. But to describe the plot of this novel is to miss the depth and creativity of Woolf’s writing and perspective, which bounces from inner mind to inner mind, visiting everyone from the family matriarch Mrs. Ramsay to the insufferable “brilliant” student Charles Tansley. The team digs into Woolf’s third novel and contrasts it with Céline Sciamma’s beautiful film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which also explores the inner lives of women, with art as a vehicle.




Titles and topics discussed:

  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  • Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • JR by William Gaddis
  • The films of Robert Altman
  • Dada
  • Surrealism
  • Cubism
  • Victorian and interwar architecture
  • Painted Ladies of San Francisco
  • Architecture of Cape May, New Jersey
  • Frank Lloyd Wright and Fallingwater
  • Ulysses by James Joyce
  • Portrait of a Lady on Fire, directed by Céline Sciamma
  • The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice
  • The Metamorphoses of Ovid (Jess recommends the Allen Mandelbaum translation)
  • The Georgics by Virgil
  • Find them in SCPL’s catalog by clicking here!