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lee_brahms's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
italorebelo's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.75
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
5.0
"To love makes one solitary."
This book seems to start in middle and end in middle. It goes over a single day in life of Mrs. Clarissa Dollasway, a women entering old age and ends up capturing all her life.
The day which forms the time span of the book is most ordinary one except that Peter Welsh, her old friend and ex-lover would come to meet her.
There are choices one has to live with - it is too late when one realizes it was a wrong time, or at other times one may never realize it and thus must live in doubt. Clarrisa's decision not to marry Peter Welsh and marry Richard Dollasway falls in later case. She is now married for years and has a daughter, and yet she keeps revisiting (for she can't help it) the question of correctness of her choice. She could remember only very silly small things of old times as she looks forward to her meeting with Peter Walsh after a long time. She keeps telling herself that she made a right choice; and more so during her meeting with him (where she provides herself reasons for believing same).
“Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
She loves society and likes proper men with suits, and Peter Welsh, despite their friendship, was and still is rough when it comes to social skills. She doesn't have a lot of bookish knowledge and likes to give parties which invites the criticism from two of her best friends, Peter and Sally Setan. she had a strange crush on later - a hint at lesbian love?
“It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.”
Peter, forced to live with an unrequited and never dying love has made a few bad choices and thus at this stage he has no house of his own, no money, no wife or family and still carries his old socially rough social habbits. Seeing Clarrisa is hard on him and he must tell her that he is still young (at fifty two) and may put his life to order.
It is in consciousness of these two that we spend most of our time -and consciousness is the word (their thoughts of their memories are mixed with things and noises happening around them). Though we do visit a few other characters and which brings a somewhat irrelevant side story that of a mentally ill husband and his wife, which touches the main story at like two places and that not too closely.
There you go, I have given up the whole story but you know what? it doesn't matter. As I told you the book is always in middle of things and it is more of a stroll in a park rather than a race from beginning to end (where you could have spoilers) - it is an effort to capture life at large of its title character (old best friends getting together, thinking of things they did and didn't do - that sort of thing) and the story, deceptively simple as it is, is simply a background detail.
The narration is so beautiful that words seems to be dissolving before eyes, making reading easy and manages to give a comprehensive view that one doesn't need to put in a lot of thought to look for hidden things.
Now this last quote simply because I love it:
“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”
This book seems to start in middle and end in middle. It goes over a single day in life of Mrs. Clarissa Dollasway, a women entering old age and ends up capturing all her life.
The day which forms the time span of the book is most ordinary one except that Peter Welsh, her old friend and ex-lover would come to meet her.
There are choices one has to live with - it is too late when one realizes it was a wrong time, or at other times one may never realize it and thus must live in doubt. Clarrisa's decision not to marry Peter Welsh and marry Richard Dollasway falls in later case. She is now married for years and has a daughter, and yet she keeps revisiting (for she can't help it) the question of correctness of her choice. She could remember only very silly small things of old times as she looks forward to her meeting with Peter Walsh after a long time. She keeps telling herself that she made a right choice; and more so during her meeting with him (where she provides herself reasons for believing same).
“Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
She loves society and likes proper men with suits, and Peter Welsh, despite their friendship, was and still is rough when it comes to social skills. She doesn't have a lot of bookish knowledge and likes to give parties which invites the criticism from two of her best friends, Peter and Sally Setan. she had a strange crush on later - a hint at lesbian love?
“It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.”
Peter, forced to live with an unrequited and never dying love has made a few bad choices and thus at this stage he has no house of his own, no money, no wife or family and still carries his old socially rough social habbits. Seeing Clarrisa is hard on him and he must tell her that he is still young (at fifty two) and may put his life to order.
It is in consciousness of these two that we spend most of our time -and consciousness is the word (their thoughts of their memories are mixed with things and noises happening around them). Though we do visit a few other characters and which brings a somewhat irrelevant side story that of a mentally ill husband and his wife, which touches the main story at like two places and that not too closely.
There you go, I have given up the whole story but you know what? it doesn't matter. As I told you the book is always in middle of things and it is more of a stroll in a park rather than a race from beginning to end (where you could have spoilers) - it is an effort to capture life at large of its title character (old best friends getting together, thinking of things they did and didn't do - that sort of thing) and the story, deceptively simple as it is, is simply a background detail.
The narration is so beautiful that words seems to be dissolving before eyes, making reading easy and manages to give a comprehensive view that one doesn't need to put in a lot of thought to look for hidden things.
Now this last quote simply because I love it:
“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”
martareads13's review against another edition
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
efletcher10's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
bhnmt61's review against another edition
5.0
I've wanted to read this novel, felt like I should read this novel, for a long time. So I used a book challenge to motivate myself to take it on. The plot is fairly famous: Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. The entire book takes place in one day, starting in the morning as Clarissa goes out to buy flowers ("Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself") and ending in the early hours of the next morning as the party ends.
Woolf describes the interior lives of half a dozen people who are crossing paths in London, connected to the party or not: Peter Walsh, an ex-flame whom Clarissa hasn't seen in decades; Richard, her husband; Elizabeth, the Dalloways' daughter; Clarissa herself; and perhaps most importantly, Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of WWI who is suffering from severe PTSD, and his young Italian wife Lucrezia. The characters think about their youth, the fleeting moments that mean so much in memories, economics, class, friendship, loyalty, infatuation, marriage, and just about everything else. But you could argue that the entire novel is really about England's fall from colonial empire-- what does it mean to participate in London society when England is no longer what it once was?
Maybe that is a stretch. But although Mrs. Dalloway has its difficult moments, I found it easier to read than To the Lighthouse. It is occasionally tedious, but Woolf pulls everything together at the end. For every time I was lost, there were three times I was awed by her brilliance.
Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know. All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was! -- that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all....
I listened to about half of it on audio, read by Juliet Stevenson, who is marvelous. For the first time ever, I sat and listened to the audio with the book open in front of me so I could read along. Highly recommend that method to get your bearings in the story.
All in all, it was not by any means a fun summer read, but it was worth reading, especially if you are an Anglophile completist. I'm not exactly sure if I am, but it does make me happy to check off this classic.
Woolf describes the interior lives of half a dozen people who are crossing paths in London, connected to the party or not: Peter Walsh, an ex-flame whom Clarissa hasn't seen in decades; Richard, her husband; Elizabeth, the Dalloways' daughter; Clarissa herself; and perhaps most importantly, Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of WWI who is suffering from severe PTSD, and his young Italian wife Lucrezia. The characters think about their youth, the fleeting moments that mean so much in memories, economics, class, friendship, loyalty, infatuation, marriage, and just about everything else. But you could argue that the entire novel is really about England's fall from colonial empire-- what does it mean to participate in London society when England is no longer what it once was?
Maybe that is a stretch. But although Mrs. Dalloway has its difficult moments, I found it easier to read than To the Lighthouse. It is occasionally tedious, but Woolf pulls everything together at the end. For every time I was lost, there were three times I was awed by her brilliance.
Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know. All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was! -- that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all....
I listened to about half of it on audio, read by Juliet Stevenson, who is marvelous. For the first time ever, I sat and listened to the audio with the book open in front of me so I could read along. Highly recommend that method to get your bearings in the story.
All in all, it was not by any means a fun summer read, but it was worth reading, especially if you are an Anglophile completist. I'm not exactly sure if I am, but it does make me happy to check off this classic.
aidanrt's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I must read this every 5 or so years for I should think there is brilliance that I may not have recognized the first time round