A brilliant piece of literature but story that's hard to follow

To the Lighthouse was first published on May 5, 1927 by Virginia Woolf and was a landmark novel. Reporter Aden Miles read the book when he was 19 years old and said it was a way of telling stories that he had never read before
 
Anyone who has read To the Lighthouse will inform you that it is of extreme modernism and can be difficult to follow.

The story centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

Following in the traditions of other modernist novelists like James Joyce, Woolf's plot is secondary to thoughtful reflection and can be hard to grasp.
There is little dialogue and no action as most of it is written as observations. Hence the reason for the difficulty to follow the story.

To the Lighthouse has many themes where it seeks to investigate the means of perception, attempting to understand people.

The themes also includes the of loss subjectivity, perception and the passing of time, which can occur mid-sentence.
Some of the characters also display elements of modernist thinking. One such character include Mrs Ramsay abuse Victorian standards of society and she challenges the existence of God.

To the Lighthouse isn't a light read. It is written on thoughts and reflections and can change mid-sentence.
However, it is a brilliant piece of literature that explores story telling in such a different form.