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I certainly do love my Ginny, since Lighthouse and Dalloway were both revelations, and Orlando and some of the others I've read were better at some points than others, but I can't say I haven't enjoyed reading her pretty much every time I do.

The Waves is what separates the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Whether or not you can handle an author's excesses- of style, usually- is really the clinching factor as to whether or not you really love their work. Sure, the greats are Great because they have at least one Great Book, but when you decide to "take up" an author you are really in some way committing to reading them to the extent that they go as far out on their own personal limb as possible. You forgive their excesses because you love what the bring to the table. It's worth it in the end.

That's kind of how I feel about The Waves. I'd heard a lot about it and when I got my hands on a copy I dug in....the opening passage is brilliant and evocative. All I need is lyrical descriptions of nature and people's internal monologues and I'm a happy reader. This one delivers both of these in spades.

In some sense, it's like that scene in the Simpsons when Homer goes to hell and the sarcastic Devil says "O you like doughnuts, do ya? Well here's ALL THE DOUGHNUTS IN THE WORLD!" and proceeds to shove mountains of doughnuts into Homer's gaping mouth.

All Homer says is "Mmmm. Doughnuts."

That's how The Waves is. It's literally just internal monologues of six different characters, all of whom know each other and have memories of each other but don't actually interact with each other. It's just soliloquy after soliloquy, with short prose poem-like intervals describing the sunlight falling and eventually setting over a beach. Cuz it's....The Waves! Get it?

Well I love this kind of thing and as the pages turned I started marking passage after passage. I'll probably never go back to any of the pieces I singled out for attention, admittedly, but I was moved to mark them anyway, which is something I don't ordinarily do.

So I'd call the experience of reading The Waves exhilarating, enthralling, enrapturing....all that good stuff...BUT.

The lack of plot surprised me, and my desire for something to, you know, like, actually happen also surprised me. There is something of a plot if you want to go back and find the ways in which the characters' thinking connects to things that happen out in in the real world, but as the man said: if you read {The Waves} for the plot, you would hang yourself.

So ultimately I had to give this four stars instead of five, just because too much of a good thing (and good lord can Woolf ever write! I mean she could describe a ham and cheese sandwich sitting on a plate and make it poetic) was almost too much, until it wasn't.