The Waves
Virginia Woolf
The Waves
Also in Romanian
4.14from 57,074 ratingson Goodreads
Six friends speak in turn from childhood to late middle age, each voice circling the others and a seventh friend, Percival, who never speaks at all. Between their sections the sun crosses the sky over the sea, from dawn to dark. Woolf's most experimental novel (1931).
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Published in 1931, The Waves follows six friends, Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis, from early childhood to late middle age, entirely through their own voices. Their soliloquies are set between interludes that trace the course of the sun over the sea from dawn to night, as if their whole lives passed in a single day. Virginia Woolf called it a playpoem, and it is her most experimental novel. A seventh friend, Percival, never speaks, yet the others orbit around him. Through rhythm and imagery rather than plot, the book explores identity, friendship, loss and the attempt to give shape to a life.
Characters
Bernard — Central voice
A born storyteller who searches for phrases and narratives to give shape to shared experience.
Susan — Central voice
A woman whose attachment to country life, family, and physical labor defines her sense of belonging.
Rhoda — Central voice
An intensely inward figure troubled by social encounters and an unstable sense of self.
Neville — Central voice
A sensitive, intellectually exacting man whose desire for intimate attachment shapes his life.
Jinny — Central voice
A woman acutely aware of her body and the shifting possibilities of social life.
Louis — Central voice
An outsider driven by ambition and a desire to overcome his sense of exclusion.
Percival — Absent central figure
A friend seen through the others' voices, whose presence gathers their admiration and longing.
About the author
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English novelist and essayist, and one of the central figures of literary modernism. She wrote novels that follow consciousness rather than plot — a day in a city, a decade passing in an empty house — and found a form for the way attention actually moves. With her husband Leonard she ran the Hogarth Press, which published her own books along with T. S. Eliot and the first English translations of Freud. Her work includes Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves and the essay A Room of One's Own.