How I came to dive into The Waves

Jeanette Winterson dedicated an essay in Art Objects to The Waves: Why and to how to read it. I've read quite a bit of Woolf's work; this is by far the most enchantingly challenging and thus gratifying experience I've ever had reading a book. And it would not have happened without Winterson's enraptured appeal to put the effort into it.

My delight comes from reading it out loud and slowly. Winterson likens the prose to poetry. She writes: "Woolf's words are cells of energy." Hers is "[t]he language of rapture." "There is no fight between exactness and rapture. The Waves is carried away by its own words. The words in rhythmic motion in and out, preoccupying, echoing, leaving a trail across the mind."

What a gift this intimacy between a reader and a writer writing about another writer who one can then read.