This plot-less exploration of lifetime friendships and the fluidity of the characters from childhood to old age offers a deeply involving if difficult reading experience. Woolf's lyrical writing and colors, nature, animals, meals, made it worthwhile and it's best to let [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1439492320l/46114._SY75_.jpg|6057263] wash over the reader without trying too hard to parse meaning. Play-like, [a:Woolf Virginia|19441669|Woolf Virginia|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] takes on identity, mortality, and friendship: in six characters who are perhaps one character based on the author. Bernard, the writer with his phrases, is our anchor, and Louis, is "stone-carved, sculpturesque; Neville, scissor-cutting, exact; Susan with eyes like lumps of crystal; Jinny dancing like a flame, febrile, hot, over dry earth; and Rhoda the nymph of the fountain always wet." The bonds and points of view shift in the soliloquies. There is no dialogue.
I think one of the most enjoyable reviews is Fionnuala's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3219885-the-waves.
I want to read more Woolf, this is said to be the most challenging of her books.

"I felt leap up that old impulse, which has moved me all my life, to be thrown up and down on the roar of other people's voices, singing the same song; to be tossed up and down on the roar of almost senseless merriment, sentiment, triumph, desire."

"Some people go to priests, others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken--I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat."
Quarantined. ( )

This is one of the few experimental novels that I truly love. In my copy from college I think I underlined every other sentence. ( )

Woolf's words are magic and filled with such true beauty and melancholy. Finally reading her later in life continues to be a revelation. ( )

I've never read anything like this but it was so impressive. It was also challenging, frustrating, and required great attention. But the pay off was so worth it. It took me years to really understand how to read Virginia Woolf but I am in awe of her now. She had a brilliant mind and a great talent. She just requires your full attention to every sentence and that was a skill that took time for me to develop, but she has fully won me over with this book. ( )

一道幽深的阴影出现在地平线上，分开了海和天，那块灰色的布面上现出一道道色彩浓重的条带，它们前后翻滚，在水下，你推我拥，相互追逐，绵延不绝。

时钟发出嘀嗒的响声，它的两条指针如在大漠中跋涉的车队，钟面上的黑色条纹就是绿洲。分针向前奔走着寻找水源，而时针只能痛苦地在沙漠炙热的石块中跌跌撞撞地前行，它就要死在沙漠里了。

我手里捧着我的忧伤——不，不是我的忧伤，而是我们这人生的难以理解的答案——依次走到他们跟前，请他们检验。有的人去找牧师；有的人依靠诗歌；而我则依靠我的朋友，依靠我自己的心，在各种辞藻和断简残篇当中，寻觅某种完整无缺的东西——对我来说，月亮和树木中的美还显得不够；对我来说，一个人与另一个人的接触就是一切，然而我感到连这个也是难以捉摸的，因为我是那么的不完整，那么的脆弱，那么难以言喻的孤独。我就是这样坐在那里。