For years, it seems, I have been listening to an audiobook of To the Lighthouse, beautifully read — narrated, I should say — by Juliet Stevenson. (I have read the book in its printed form too, of course, and have at least one copy of it in a bedraggled paperbook on my Paris Virginia Woolf, shelf, as well as hardbound editions of the diaries and letters. I always have one volume of the Diary beside the bed in Paris. When I finish all the Diaries, I go back and start over.

But I’ve discovered that an audiobook is a wonderful way to get to sleep at bedtime, or get back to sleep in the middle of the night: I plug an earbud into one ear, the one that won’t be on the pillow, set the volume low, and the timer for 60 minutes and cross my fingers that I will find the earbud in the sheets if it falls out after I doze off. It no longer matters to me where I begin and where I stop listening, always I hear new things in Juliet Stevenson’s narration

Last night, however, listening to the the dinner scene at the end of section 1, I began to count up how many people were staying in the Ramsay house: parents and children alone make 10, plus their guests, and then there’s the staff. That must make, let’s guess, 20 people to plan, shop and cook for every day. Presumably Mrs Ramsay is the overseer of this domesticity (hard to imagine Mr Ramsay had the patience). So 20-ish people around the table or in the kitchen or upstairs putting small children to bed. Twenty people to plan, shop and cook for every day! How did she do it? It boggles my mind.

Beverley Bie Brahic