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All the Lives We Ever Lived
All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf | Katharine Smyth
5 posts | 1 read | 1 reading | 8 to read
Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford when she first read Virginia Woolf's modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death - a calamity that claimed her favourite person - she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief. Smyth's story moves between the New England of her childhood and Woolf's Cornish shores and Bloomsbury squares, exploring universal questions about family, loss and homecoming. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of To the Lighthouse and her artful adaptation of its groundbreaking structure, Smyth guides us towards a new vision of Woolf's most demanding and rewarding novel - and crafts an elegant reminder of literature's ability to clarify and console. Braiding memoir, literary criticism and biography, All the Lives We Ever Lived is a wholly original debut: a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author.
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review
BookishTrish
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Mehso-so

This very personal meditation on grief meets literary criticism of Woolf‘s To the Lighthouse was my companion on many sleepless nights. It was a perfect #insomnia read - well-written but not so engrossing I couldn‘t put it down if the urge to sleep struck. Much of the TOL parts was lost on me — I haven‘t read it in more than 20 years.

78 likes2 stack adds1 comment
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BookishTrish
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The author is talking about grief at 4 AM when I am once again up and despairing at how mentally present the day will require me to be. #insomnia

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BookishTrish
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A heartbreaking moment in ones life to be sure, but I‘m still trying to figure out who this mashup of literary appreciation of To The Lighthouse and memoir is for.

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BookishTrish
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TrishB Lovely 💕 6y
Cathythoughts Beautiful quote & pic 6y
LA_Mead Beautiful! 6y
79 likes3 comments
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BookishTrish
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Is it just me or is this needlessly unkind? Is it meant to be funny?

Redwritinghood Condescending humor. I‘m not a fan either. 6y
55 likes1 comment