I think this is a book best suited to those who are very recently familiar with and enamored of Woolf's work--which is not me. The prose is notable enough in this book for me to want to read more from this author, but I could not make the necessary connections between Smyth and Woolf to have this resonate on a deeper level.

Was delighted to feature Katharine Smyth's memoir in the newspaper Books section lead essay on the legacy, limitations, and continued relevance of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, for the annual Dalloway Day celebrations.

To the Lighthouse is one of my favorite books. I learned so much about feminism, patriarchal roles, and loss. This sounds simplistic, but I was always sad they never reached the Lighthouse in the story. I know it’s a metaphor, but it stings so much not getting what we truly want or getting it too late to be of use. It represents something that will never be reached and a place we can never return. Something that is gone that is gone forever. Smith takes her love of To The Lighthouse and applies it to her own situation. Mrs. Ramsay and her father become intertwined. It becomes a treatise on her love for her father and what she has lost.

After my father’s death, I read a lot of stories like this. It helps the grieving process by seeing the experience of others and in a way seeing your own albeit indirectly. However, as a parent I would be both mortified and sad if my child wrote something like this. I would feel exposed and worry how they look at my so negatively. To me, this book does not reflect her father in a positive way and I am not sure if that is the author’s Intention. Her attempt to resurrect her father mirror’s Virginia Woolf’s resurrection of her mother in Lighthouse. This resurrection of their minor gods is a masterpiece by Woolf, but a Frankenstein’s monster with Smyth. This is cathartic for the author, but the reader sees too much of an unsatisfactory ending. .

Although I did not connect with the autobiographical details, I loved her musings on Virginia Woolf -- exactly the opposite of what some of my friends felt.

Smyth's writing is absolutely beautiful; lyrical and at times even breathtaking. She has a way with words, with stringing them into effective prose, that I can't wait to see more of. Perhaps I was simply the wrong person for this memoir, as I have not read Woolf since high school and confess myself not currently familiar with the nuances of her work that may have benefitted me in the reading of All the Lives We Ever Lived, but I felt somehow removed from the story, grasping for connection to the author and her life. Many of the references that might have struck a chord for serious Woolf fans just fell flat for me and narratively, there were a few things in Smyth's text I felt may have helped (a more protracted description of her father's death, more on her relationship with her mother and others in her family, etc.) If you are a fan of Woolf, of memoirs, and of gorgeous writing, you will likely enjoy this.

It's a a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author. This book is amazing and I would highly recommend to read.

The loss of a loved one teaches us many life lessons. In this memoir about her father, Katharine Smyth writes: "From my father's death, I learned that grief is personal and unpredictable, that it will confound our expectations as often as fulfill them, that the disappearance of a loved one, even the most loved one, is not necessarily the insurmountable setback we foresee."

It's hard-earned wisdom and comes to Smyth painfully and slowly as she pieces together many significant memories of her father (including from others, before she was born), the person she had been with him, and the way of life she'd had with him and her mother. Losing him over a prolonged period of time due to a cancer that wouldn't quit, Smyth was still hit suddenly by his passing. As a beloved only child, her grieving was different from that of her mother's as the spouse of a long-time depressive alcoholic. Which is probably why Smyth turned for solace to a literary source: Virginia Woolf's novel, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE.

(my complete review is at the this link: https://www.popmatters.com/all-lives-ever-lived-smyth-2629942180.html)

This is a beautifully written memoir, that examines how characters from Jane Austen's "The Lighthouse" have relevance and compare to the author's own life. I liked this memoir.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

Katharine Smyth adored her father, even as he sabotaged his relationships and refused to address his alcoholism. He used his charisma and adoration for his daughter to ignore the impact of his addiction and cancer on his family and the way he baited and fought with his wife. And so Katharine loved her difficult father in life and mourned him after he died. In her grief, she looked to a book about complicated relationships that was written after the loss of a parent: Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse.

All the Lives We Ever Lived is a slow, meandering read. Smyth writes lovely prose, but the reader has to be content to meander along with her as she carefully finds the parallels between her relationship with her father and the relationships between Virginia Woolf's characters. There are moments when you may have to push yourself to keep reading because there is not a great narrative immediacy, but this is a seamless blend of family memoir and literary criticism.

Katharine Smyth has done a lovely job of writing about what it means to look for answers and for solace. She writes about the limits of truly knowing someone, even a person you have lived with and loved for years. She explores the different ways we grieve, when someone dies and for all the ways our lives could have been different. This is the kind of book that will make you think about your own family, what it means to love someone who makes bad choices, and the books that carry us through our moments of tragedy.

All The Lives We Ever Lived:
Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf
By Katharine Smyth
Crown January 2019
320 pages
Read via Netgalley

The death of her father has left Katharine pondering about her life and the people playing major roles in it. Amongst them is not only her family but also Virginia Woolf whose works deeply impressed her when she was a student at Oxford. The parallels between “To the Lighthouse” and her own life are stunning, especially when it comes to the impact that places have on the people. It is her family’s summer house in Rhode Island that first and foremost underlines this impression. Re-reading Virginia Woolf gives her the opportunity to understand her grief as well as her family relationships and to finally cope with her father’s passing.

Katharine Smyth makes it easy for the reader to follow her thoughts. Even though it is some years since I last read “To the Lighthouse”, I could effortlessly find my way back into the novel and see the thread that Smyth also saw. I found it an interesting approach for a memoir or biography and I liked it a lot.

There are two major aspects that I’d like to mention. First of all, Katharine Smyth cleverly shows how literature can help to overcome hard situations and to find solace in reading. It has been a concept since the ancient times, the classic Greek drama with its purgatory function and the possibility of a katharsis which helps you to sort out your feelings and opens the way to go on in life. Second, I also appreciated the author’s frankness. It is certainly not easy to write about the own father’s addiction and his slow deterioration, yet, the process of writing might have helped her, too, and embellishing things would have been counterproductive here.

An interesting memoir which was also beautifully written that made me think about which novel I would pick as a parallel to my own life.

Beautiful. This book is a breathtaking tribute to life, love, and literature. Since the age of twenty, Katharine Smyth has been enamored with the book To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.  In All the Lives We Ever Lived, she blurs the line between memoir and books about books as she tells how the book impacted her life. She writes of her relationship with her father, growing up, loss, and turbulence as To the Lighthouse weaves its way around her stories. There is also the backdrop of a glamorous childhood complete with lake house.

If you want a truly full reading experience, check out Katharine's Instagram where you can view pictures of Virginia Woolf sites as well as photographs of Katharine and her dad.  

I expect sales of Woolf's novel will soar upon the publication of this book on January 29th.  I myself have not read it and now not only long to read it, but am also dreaming of summer, on the beach, near a lighthouse.

This is the most amazing memoir I have ever read!! I couldn't put it down! This is Katharine's first book and I can't wait to see what she does next. I was a little intimidated to read it because I had never read anything by Virginia Woolf. But, don't be. She wove three family stories into one flawlessly!!

All the Lives We Ever Lived is an evocative portrait of the deep bond between the author and her dynamic, difficult father. It is an exploration of her overwhelming grief at his death. In her struggle to communicate the complexity of that experience, Smyth turns to Virginia Woolf, to the book that has long been her lodestar at life's most difficult moments: To the Lighthouse.

Smyth draws comparisons between her relationships and those of the characters in Woolf's masterwork. She admires how Woolf grapples with the deepest, most fundamental human questions about childhood memories, love, family life, and loss. Like Woolf, Smyth struggles to reach a sense of clarity in her experience of love and loss. She finds that capturing these essential aspects of humanity in words to be an elusive task.

The author herself has a beautiful way with language. This book made me want to read more of her work. I underlined many passages in this memoir and Smyth's love of Woolf's text certainly made me want to revisit it soon. I do think that I would have appreciated Smyth's dive into sections of To the Lighthouse much more if I had a fresher awareness of Woolf's novel. There were passages that didn't resonate as much for me because of this, and I do think readers do need to have read To the Lighthouse to appreciate this book.

All the Lives We Ever Lived did make me think about which book, if any book, would be that one for me, the one that I might come back to again and again for wisdom and guidance. You can have a lifelong relationship with a book, as Smyth proves here. The idea that there could be one book that would light the way for you through life is an irresistible thought for any reader. What would yours be?