I’m reading Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse written in 1927.

If you had the cast of Downton Abbey around a dining table but not talking to each other, instead thinking about each other, “a stream of consciousness”, the thoughts flowing from one person to the next, you get an idea of how this book is written. Nothing really happens except for Mrs Ramsey worrying about the beef stew and Mr Tansley asking for a second helping of soup however, that chapter had me engrossed. Commuting on the train to and from work, I was immersed into this surreal dining table scene.

I’m fighting the urge to stop reading this book. It’s written unlike anything I’ve read before. Last night, I ask my husband to read aloud to me in case it would make me like it more. He relishes in reading to me so he can “do the voices”.

I wondered how he would do this book’s voices. He couldn’t.

The voices were all what people were thinking but it flowed from one perspective to the next. One moment it was Mrs Ramsey the next we were reading the thoughts of Lily.

It’s mesmerising.

That’s what good writing does. It holds us. We want to let it go but we can’t. We stick with it until we come to a chapter like this and it all falls into place and it’s beauty is revealed to you.

….and I’m so jealous. Why can’t I write like this?