A Birthday

Today is Virginia Woolf's birthday.

Her novels are not thought of as being easy to read. I'm not sure this is true and, even if it is, I think it's true to say that many of the most rewarding things in life are not easy to get to grips with at first. Perhaps if you want to be merely entertained you should read something else. But if you want to read a book that's going to make the world look different after you read it, you could do worse than read Woolf.

The first of her books I ever read was To the Lighthouse. I started trying to read it perhaps fifteen times and never got further than the first few pages. Every time I ran into the sand, though, I left it with the feeling that there was something magical about the book that I just wasn't getting but which I just had to discover. Next time, I'd finish it. Finally, I did. I read it again. I still drop in, regularly. It went from being impenetrable to being perhaps my all-time favourite novel. Her writing can be quite addictive when you get into it.

People often describe Woolf's writing as 'stream of consciousness'. It's an off-putting term that makes a book sound difficult even before you read it. Not only that, but in Woolf's case it's usually incorrectly applied. Strictly speaking, stream of consciousness is the writing down of a character's thoughts as they might be imagined to think them. Although she found radical new ways of writing novels, the way Woolf actually writes is usually more conventional than this. I think people misapply the term because Woolf, better than any writer I know (ok, I'm a fan), creates a vivid impression of actually being able to see inside the mind of another. It's worth persevering with her novels if only to experience this. It's the source of the magic I referred to earlier.

Once I'd read To the Lighthouse I went on to read Jacob's Room, Mrs Dalloway and The Waves. The only one, so far, I've not got on with at all is The Voyage Out. I started with To the Lighthouse because it was the first of her books I happened to pick up. I later realised that Mrs Dalloway is perhaps the easiest of her great novels to get to grips with.

To set her writing aside for a moment, and end on a more personal note, I read something she said the other day. I quote it because, with all great artists, people tend to dwell on and embellish the darker moments in their lives. I want to buck the trend. Reflecting on what made her happy, she wrote: I think it’s the moment when one is walking in one’s garden, perhaps picking off a few dead flowers, and then suddenly one thinks: My husband lives in that house—and he loves me.