When Mrs Ramsay tells her son at their summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later, and that a gulf of war, grief and loss will have opened in the meantime. As each family member and house guest tries to readjust their memories and emotions with the shifts of time and reality, this long-delayed excursion will also come to represent a journey of self-discovery and fulfilment for some. Rich in symbolism, daring in style, elegiac in tone and encapsulating Virginia Woolf 's ideas on life, art and human relationships, To the Lighthouse is a landmark of twentieth century literature and one of the high points of early Modernism.