Penguin presents the companion book to the "Masterpiece Theatre" miniseries starring Gillian Anderson (T"he House of Mirth, The X-Files"). This stunning production features a screenplay written by Andrew Davies ("Bridget Jones's Diary"). Part romance, part melodrama, part detective story, the novel spreads out among a web of relationships in every level of society.
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE is a haunting psychological portrait of the Ramsay family and their friends who gather for a brief vacation in the Ramsay summer home on the Hebrides Isle of Skye. There is talk of a boating trip to the lighthouse at the island's end. But the year is 1914, a World War intervenes, and it is a somber group that finally assembles to make the ritual journey. The five brief essays that comprise THE LONDON SCENE conjure up the invisible magic known as London. The author lifts the city's docks, its abbeys and cathedrals, the houses of its great men, Oxford Street, and the House of Commons above the commonplace.
When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as 'a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action'. She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path. But that way leads to disillusionment and a future as constricted as 'a dark narrow alley with a dead wall at the end'. In a conclusion that is one of the most moving in modern fiction, Isabel makes her final choice.