Secure A Copy All The Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace In Virginia Woolf Developed By Katharine Smyth In Paper Copy

first read To the Lighthouse in Christmas, during her junior year abroad at Oxford, Shortly thereafter her father had surgery in Boston to remove his bladder, one of many operations hed had during a decade battling cancer, But even this new health scare wasnt enough to keep him from returning to his habitual three bottles of wine a day, Woolf was there for Smyth during this crisis and all the time leading up to her fathers death, with Lighthouse and Woolfs own life reflecting Smyths experience in unanticipated ways.
The Smyths Rhode Island beach house, for instance, was reminiscent of the Stephens home in Cornwall, Woolfs mothers death was an end to the summer visits, and to her childhood Lighthouse would become her elegy to those bygone days.


Often a short passage by or about Woolf is enough to launch Smyth back into her memories, As an only child, she envied the busy family life of the Ramsays in Lighthouse, She delves into the mystery of her parents marriage and her fathers faltering architecture career, She also undertakes Woolf tourism, including the Cornwall cottage, Knole, Charleston and Monks House where Woolf wrote most of Lighthouse, Her writing is dreamy, mingling past and present as she muses on time and grief, The passages of Woolf pastiche are obvious but short enough not to overstay their welcome, Its a most unusual book in the conception, but for Woolf fans especially, it works, However, I wished I had read Lighthouse more recently than,years ago its one to reread,

Why Woolf “I think its Woolfs mastery of moments like thesemoments that hold up a mirror to our private tumult while also revealing how much we as humans sharethat most draws me to her.
”

Undergraduate wisdom: “Woolfs technique: taking a very complex usually female character and using her mind as an emblem

of all minds” copied from notes I took during a lecture on To the Lighthouse in my Modern Wasteland course, sophomore year of college

Also recommended: sitelinkVirginia Woolf in Manhattan by Maggie Gee, sitelinkVanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar, and sitelinkAdeline by Norah Vincent

Originally published on my blog, sitelinkBookish Beck.
Any author who describes her passionate engagement with Virginia Woolfs writing will instantly grab my attention, So when I saw how Katharine Smyths memoir “All the Lives We Ever Lived” is about her process of finding solace in reading Woolfs novel “To the Lighthouse” amidst the prolonged illness and death of her father I was drawn to it.
My experience was further enhanced by reading this book along with fellow YouTubers Britta Bohler and Kendra Winchester, We left each other wonderfully long geeky messages about our reactions to the book and general thoughts about Virginia Woolfs life and work, I think this is what makes this book something more than a traditional memoir its a communion for anyone who has been deeply affected by Woolfs writing.
Smyth mimics the structure of “To the Lighthouse” to tell her own experiences before, during and after her fathers illness to mirror the three sections of Woolfs novel.
But she also interjects how her experiences and emotions are informed by her reading as well as meditating on the life of Woolf herself.
In this way the author creatively approaches the experience of grief and mourning, the complexity of how we feel about our families and how our relationship with art and literature is often deeply personal.


Read my full sitelinkreview of All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth on LonesomeReader “All The Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf”is written by Katharine Smyth, and is an articulate exploration of literary criticism combined with a deeply personal memoir and tribute to the life and death of her beloved father who passed away from cancer and alcohol related conditions.
Smyth is a graduate from Brown University, with a MFA in nonfiction,

While studying at Oxford and visiting her grandmother, Smyth and her parents embarked on a “Virginia Woolf Road Trip” where they toured the massive Knole House estate Vita SackvilleWest, the country home of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, the Berwick Church, and finally, the “Monks House” Rodmell of Virginia and Lenard Woolf.
The house was dark and shabby inside, the worn furniture included “spindly inhospitable” chairs, and faded paintings, The sunny writing room/studio where Woolf produced “To The Lighthouse”was at the back of the house,pages of the manuscript was on her desk, with pages from her diary, and a single tea cup.
The gardens were most memorable: paths of “weathered stones” led to the flowerbeds that extended to a yard and shaded pool, The tour took place on a warm sunny day, though her father was ill and walked slowly, hunched over, he had already endured many treatments for his poor health that included brief stay in a rehab facility for alcoholism.

To The Lighthouse is the novel that Virginia Woolf wrote to deal with her shattering grief over the loss of her mother when she was a child, and years later, two siblings and her father as a young adult.
The novel is about the Ramsey family and how profound grief shaped their life following the loss of Mrs, Ramsey, wife and mother: “The things that bound families and life together had been out of a family fight, Mr. Ramsey wanted to go to the lighthouse, . ”
In addition to finding solace in literature, Smyth wrote of her longing for the ritualized comfort of religion and/or a God she didnt believe in.
Grief over the loss of her father was terribly agonizing for her, with a “shapelessness” of loss that unexpressed invited its own form of hypocrisy.

Some of the passages are exquisitely lyrically written, particularly the nature writing at the Rhode Island summer home of her parents reflections at the waters edge, the ducks, birds, plants, the elements of weather.
Smyths college professor observed how well she understood and was attuned to Woolfs writing, Athough with the endless and unknown amounts of manuscripts reports and articles commonly available worldwide by notable Woolf scholars, this book may or may not stand out.


The healthcare and treatments combined with the very slow detailed agonizing death process of her fatherin many ways this was just TMI, and certainly could have been condensed on many levels as to preserve his dignity and privacy.
I couldnt help but wonder about Smyths mothers part in the story, it seemed odd that Smyth had so little to say about her.
The stories of her fathers friends and lovers were very interesting, the audiobook added to the appeal of the storyline,With thanks to the Seattle Public Library, This was fine, but it left me asking "why am I reading this when I could just be reading To the Lighthouse again" A wise, lyrical memoir about the power of literature to help us read our own lives and see clearly the people we love most.


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 favorite personshe 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 toward a new vision of Woolf's most demanding and rewarding noveland 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.
How does one even go about rating and reviewing the memoirs of another Something I had never previously had occasion to ask myself, What I will say is that I appreciate the author making To the Lighthouse and Virginia Woolf accessible,
I had tried to read Lighthouse previously, because it is such a classic, and I would have felt remiss if I did not, but the writing style of Woolf, with the endless commas, sentences which stretch on forever, I think called streamofconsciousness, sentences which take up an entire paragraph, indeed even half a page, such as this one, were simply too exhausting and convoluted for this poor reader to follow, and, as such, could not fully appreciate Lighthouse until Smyth came along.

I've always admired authors like Smyth who can write about such intensely personal subjects, The description of All the Lives We Ever Lived is accurate, so if you think it's a book you'd like, you will, .