Review: The Waves

The Waves by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's so very hard to review this. I read this so many many times in high school that when I picked it up today I barely needed to read it. It was all still in my heart, just like Jane Eyre. My copy is so well loved. All my junior and senior year notes in the margins and front flaps, and all my sea blue-green highlighting (I thought I was clever--ocean, waves, sea-green highlighters...I'm such a nerd!) There is no plot. It merely just lays the hearts and minds out on the table of these characters...like a deep character study. We first read this, being very confused, especially if you're not used to the stream of consciousness style, but then, for me at least, it all clicks. The "waves" can represent so many things: loss, time, aging, emotions. All of them whip you around like a damn hurricane, even if you're six or sixty. Woolf take us on a journey of the coming of age of a group of friends and their trials and thoughts. They're individuals as characters but they're also ourselves. It's all thrown to the wind though. There's no clear plot as I said, all of the prose is intricate and metaphorical and you just get so lost in it.

I relate most with Susan, who just longs for a gentle life. This book broke my heart over and over. Woolf takes us on a journey of the things we miss--every sight and smell and sound. You may not think any of this is important, but it is, as it reminds us that we are LIVING. and as hard as that can be, it's always worth it I believe. We all have new adventures: new romances, new hearts to break, new hearts to give your heart to, new books to read, new places to see. This book swooped me in and around like a rushing tide. It's a scrapbook of experience, of the mind. There's so much truth and wisdom in here that it's almost frightening--sometimes the ideas she gives us are very bleak--about loneliness and heartbreak and dying--there's nothing you can do about it. You have to surrender yourself to it. That isn't to say you should let yourself just sink into nothing at these bumps in the road. But all these bumps means you're growing and learning and living, and making yourself ready to open new doors.

There are things that require patience and waiting--I've been with my lover for 4 years now, and I love him so much that I'm waiting till he's finished university so we can be together. He lives in Australia. Most would call this foolish. I'm trying to grasp at opportunity of love. Not that I wouldn't be able to find it again. I just want to hold onto him.

Anyway, off topic. If you're in the mood for something poetic and deeply introspective and moving, and if you can get used to the writing style, I highly suggest you read this. You won't regret it.

I want to share a few of my favorite passages. They may not not make sense to you out of context. well, out of of not-so-much-context.

"Something always has to be done next. Tuesday follows Monday; Wednesday, Tuesday. Each spreads the same ripple. The being grows rings, like a tree. Like a tree, leaves fall"
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"While I sat here I have been changing. I have watched the sky change. I have seen clouds cover the stars, then free the stars, then cover the stars again. Now I look at their changing no more. Now no one sees me and I change no more"
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"My book, stuffed with phrases, has dropped to the floor. It lies under the table to be swept up by the charwoman when she comes wearily at dawn looking for scraps of paper, old tram tickets, and here and there a note screwed into a ball and left with the litter to be swept up. What is the phrase for the moon? and the phrase for love? By what name are we to call death? I do not know"
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"How much better is silence; the coffee-cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake."



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