Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

Famous book by Virginia Woolfe that takes place in one day in the life of a woman giving a party for some sort of fancy aristocratic types. Her husband is in government and she receives a visit from a man who she might be the love of her life who is back from a long time in India. The book is a sort of stream of obviousness set of impressions from the people in her life that day as they pursue their mostly pretty mundane activities in life. It culminates with many of them at the party. At best, quite poetic. At worst, too meditative and meandering.

I reluctantly gave it a high mark because I was eventually won over. She has lots of good moments in the writing, starting with her appreciation of 'life', especially in the context of the recent war, and the wonderful description of a June day. There is a note of regret throughout, about her charmed, but naive youth, and turning down an interesting man's marriage proposal, although he turns out to be hopeless.
There are no chapters and the mental meanderings are a bit purple and prolonged at times. But the knives come out for poor Miss Kilman, (interesting choice of name), the Christian who is clearly hated by Dalloway and I imagine by Virginia. Ugly sweaty and poor, though principled. Her influence on daughter Elizabeth seems unlikely. And finally what is it about the Love interest, Peter's pocket knife, which he is constantly fiddling with? ( )

So many of the reviews for Mrs. Dalloway are about walking, about absorbing in little pieces, of putting the book down for days on end.

Impossible.

I delayed as much as I could, reading a few pages and then doing the dishes, reading some more and then making another pot of coffee, but I just could not stop myself from settling down and taking it all in at once. I moved about the house, but the book was always near my elbow, on an armchair, balanced on a iced tea jar above a damp counter, at the foot of the bed while I glance through the paper one more time (all the while feeling a little absurd about having a pen ready to circle help-wanted ads, who does that?)

Virginia Woolf has been presented to me as so monumental a figure that it's only recently that I've dared to dive into her fiction for pleasure rather than for the themes to write some uninspired paper; (I fib, I'm pretty sure I skipped Mrs. Dalloway's day in class, wrote on A Room of One's Own instead) Anything I write is going to come off as uninspired next to Woolf.

But reading Woolf is a pleasure, her writing is of the kind where you want to linger, to go back a few pages and see how she did that, or those one-liners that skewer or exalt a character, a sentiment. Where you pause and just savor how perfect that was. So I can understand when others write about leisurely intake. But that's not what I wanted this time. I'll try that next go-around. Because I will read this again, and again. Maybe another time after that, too. ( )

“Mrs. Dalloway” is a classic, considered by some to be the finest modern novel. That sort of recommendation is enough to make me approach carefully; I’m not educated enough to fully appreciate the great works and I find reading them a chore. But I’m happy to say that, although I found the first bit tedious, it didn’t take me long to get sucked into the story.

It’s not that the plot is engaging; there is almost no plot. The book is merely a record of one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, and that of a few of her friends, and some people that she passes by. We are given access to their thoughts as they go about their day. Clarissa buys flowers, mends a dress, and gives a party. She hosts a visitor, just back from India. She thinks about a girl from her school days, with whom she had been in love. Septimus Smith, suffering from PTSD from WW I and the loss of a fellow soldier with whom he’d been in love, quietly sinks into a fatal madness. The stream of consciousness leads us seamlessly through the minds of these people; there are no chapters to provide breaking points. Wolff’s prose is simply beautiful; she describes the everyday moments that are usually forgotten or ignored as things of beauty. But the book is not just pretty prose; there is surprising depth to some of the characters. Clarissa and Septimus, in particular, although not directly connected, seem to be two sides of the questions of life and death. Five stars. ( )

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; (5*)

Extraordinary!
This book by Virginia Woolf has been described as the greatest novel of the English language. That may not be an exageration. Some sentences are so beautifully written that they beg to be read again and again. Woolf never fails to put me in this situation. Her writing is sublime.
The story is simple. It follows one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares to host a high society party in London that evening. It jumps from Clarissa's story to that of several of the guests. It is a story about their thoughts and reminiscences more than their actions. It is a story about the love between men and women and between women and women. It is a story about the politics of marriage in the early 20th century.
Simply put, it is a classic! Woolf was and remains stellar in the world of great literature. ( )