The Waves (Paperback)

by Virginia Woolf (Author) "THE sun had not yet risen..." (more)
Key Phrases: boasting boys, wilt thou blow, swallow dips, Hampton Court, Miss Lambert, Oxford Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Similar in style to another modernist work, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. While Joyce's novel could be considered a Bildungsroman, Woolf's novel is more concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. The Waves is different from a Bildungsroman in that the self may very well be considered to be its own society. The difficulty of assigning genre to this novel is complicated by the fact that The Waves obliterates traditional distinctions between prose and poetry, allowing the novel to flow between six not dissimilar interior monologues. The book similarly breaks down traditional boundaries between people, and Woolf herself wrote in her Diary that the six were not meant to be separate "characters" at all, but rather facets of consciousness illuminating a sense of continuity. Even the name "novel" may not accurately describe the complex form of The Waves. Woolf herself called it not a novel but a "playpoem." (wikipedia) --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review
'Together these ten volumes make an attractive and reasonably priced (the volumes vary between L3.99 and L4.99) working edition of Virginia Woolf's best-known writing. One can only hope that their success will prompt World's Classics to add her other essays to the series in due course.'  Review of English Studies, Vol. XLV, No. 178, May '94 (Elisabeth Jay, Westminster College, Oxford )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books; Later Printing edition (January 1, 1950)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156949601
• ISBN-13: 978-0156949606
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #142,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is my favorite book., November 15, 1999

By	Trina T. Brown (Salem, IN USA) - See all my reviews

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!

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do you think you've read Virginia Woolf?, October 25, 1999

By A Customer

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.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wAvEs of emotion disolving the "I", June 16, 2000

By	Buzz Advert "buzzadvert" (Milwaukee) - See all my reviews

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. Orlando

I 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!