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The Waves is an absolute masterpiece: it’s an incredible novel that flows beautifully with torrents of majestic prose.

“I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will drum in my ears. The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They will float for a moment and then sink. Rolling over the waves will shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me.��

This is creative genius at its absolute finest within fiction. I felt like I was floating, awash in words, dreams and ideas. It’s a profound exploration of the human soul and I lack the words to describe it as eloquently as it deserves.

The very first chapter is an absolute feat of writing. I felt like I watching the scene from above, peering into the lives of these characters. And the constant wave imagery is perfect. It cements the emotions, complexity and intricacies of human experience in a very imaginative way. I wish I could capture the essence of it in a review, but I think this is one that really needs to be read in order to be understood.

The novel traces the development of six friends from childhood all the way through to the trappings of middle age. There are five of them and they grew up together. They finish school (bonding over how much they hate it) and break apart when they no longer have to sit in the classroom. Their friendships become more and more distant as the years pass, as the waves of the sea continue to crash, they experience the realities of growing old and the isolation that can come with it.

This is a hard book to read, some of it may wash over you, though that is the nature of stream of consciousness writing. It is governed by shifting patterns of thoughts and feelings. The voices of each section were also quite similar. In keeping this level of similarity Woolf explores identity. The voices cross over and sound alike; they merge into each other like separate facets of a greater whole. Identity is a shifting concept and can be different things in different places.

“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.��

I knew there would be a Woolf novel I could love, and this is it. The language is poetical and deep. Woolf explores so much of human experience here and the way she has written it is so ridiculously clever. If anything, it’s a book about identity and how hard it can be to define it. In a way, others help to shape it as much as we do ourselves.

This, certainly, won’t be the last time I read it.