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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Dense but incredibly beautiful, plus it effectively captures the influence of war on how individuals relate to their environment and society.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Beautifully written. None of what happened (besides the death) was all that exciting. But it’s her writing that really makes this book. She touches on mental health, friendship, lost love, found love, the need for acceptance… for as “boring” as the plot is on paper- an upper class woman throwing a dinner party- Woolf touches on so many themes and schematic motifs it’s hard to dissect or even list them all; Themes delicately interwoven through conversations and thoughts of characters going about their mundane lives expressed with such profound prose it borders philosophical. It’s brilliant in its writing. The stream-of-consciousness syntax is not something I read regularly, but she wrote so carefully, so intentionally so that you flow from character to character, narrator to narrator effortlessly. As for the plot- it’s great insight into the minds of the upper class during (that time period) with some classic relatable-throughout-time plot lines. There’s lots of lively characters with big thoughts and big feelings, all mucking around with their own baggage. This book makes you feel smarter and less alone. What more could you want from a novel?
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
**
(re-read, first read was in my late teens/early twenties over a decade ago)
I read each of Woolf's novels up to & including 'The Waves' when I was young, and my recollection is that I deeply enjoyed all of them *except* Mrs Dalloway. I had the sense that it was a great and important work of art that I simply didn't get; that it resided just outside the edges of my intellectual ability. I found it colder, harder, more impenetrable than 'To The Lighthouse', which I fell in love with completely.
My experience re-reading Mrs Dalloway has been so rewarding. Three months ago I started seriously reading again after about a decade of reading only a handful of books each year, none of them fiction, and I've had the tendency to read too fast, to race through instead of savouring and connecting and thinking and feeling. 'Mrs Dalloway' brought me back to how I used to read as a teenager; reading, analysing, re-reading, thinking, re-reading again, wondering how others intepret these words, seeking out essays and reviews and reading those and then returning to re-read again. 'Mrs Dalloway' demands close reading and close re-reading because otherwise it's near impossible to comprehend.
I'm grateful for being reminded, forced, to read with more thought and care, and I'm also pleasantly surprised at how much I connected with 'Mrs Dalloway' this time around. The first two-thirds or so are deeply profound and absolutely stunning; beauty and insight and humanity and wisdom conveyed through reams of gorgeous poetry. There are passages here that I admire as much as anything I've ever read - Septimus's internal monologue in the park, Clarissa's memories of Sally Seton, a series of Londoners looking up at the skywriting plane, Peter Walsh's hilarious pursuit of a beautiful stranger.
I'm not convinced the final section comes anywhere close to the sheer perfection of what preceded it; I think I understand that the trivial superficiality of the party is part of the point (Michael Cunningham's brilliant essay below* digs a little into the purpose of comparing the banality of Clarissa's life with the extremities of Septimus's) but I'm just not convinced it lands. The introduction of fleeting characters that we meet for only a paragraph or two, so thrilling and brilliant in the earlier sections (the woman visiting from Edinburgh *destroys* me), feels shallower here, and I just don't really buy the climactic moment when Clarissa's learns of Septimus's story and begins to ruminate on his life & death. Clarissa seems like, well, me, and millions of others; suffering from depression, haunted by regret, borne back ceaselessly into the past, and while that's perfectly fascinating I just can't make emotional sense of parallelling that state of being with shellshock-induced paranoid schizophrenia.
I understand and appreciate Cunningham's view that 'Mrs. Dalloway is a book about a London that had been changed forever, superimposed over a London determined to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. Clarissa would stand in for all those who still believed in flowers and parties; Septimus for those who’d been harmed beyond any powers of recovery.' It makes perfect sense on an intellectual level, I just wish I felt as emotionally invested and moved by those final pages as I did by the rest. Still, I look forward to returning, and returning, and returning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/books/review/michael-cunningham-on-virginia-woolfs-literary-revolution.html
(re-read, first read was in my late teens/early twenties over a decade ago)
I read each of Woolf's novels up to & including 'The Waves' when I was young, and my recollection is that I deeply enjoyed all of them *except* Mrs Dalloway. I had the sense that it was a great and important work of art that I simply didn't get; that it resided just outside the edges of my intellectual ability. I found it colder, harder, more impenetrable than 'To The Lighthouse', which I fell in love with completely.
My experience re-reading Mrs Dalloway has been so rewarding. Three months ago I started seriously reading again after about a decade of reading only a handful of books each year, none of them fiction, and I've had the tendency to read too fast, to race through instead of savouring and connecting and thinking and feeling. 'Mrs Dalloway' brought me back to how I used to read as a teenager; reading, analysing, re-reading, thinking, re-reading again, wondering how others intepret these words, seeking out essays and reviews and reading those and then returning to re-read again. 'Mrs Dalloway' demands close reading and close re-reading because otherwise it's near impossible to comprehend.
I'm grateful for being reminded, forced, to read with more thought and care, and I'm also pleasantly surprised at how much I connected with 'Mrs Dalloway' this time around. The first two-thirds or so are deeply profound and absolutely stunning; beauty and insight and humanity and wisdom conveyed through reams of gorgeous poetry. There are passages here that I admire as much as anything I've ever read - Septimus's internal monologue in the park, Clarissa's memories of Sally Seton, a series of Londoners looking up at the skywriting plane, Peter Walsh's hilarious pursuit of a beautiful stranger.
I'm not convinced the final section comes anywhere close to the sheer perfection of what preceded it; I think I understand that the trivial superficiality of the party is part of the point (Michael Cunningham's brilliant essay below* digs a little into the purpose of comparing the banality of Clarissa's life with the extremities of Septimus's) but I'm just not convinced it lands. The introduction of fleeting characters that we meet for only a paragraph or two, so thrilling and brilliant in the earlier sections (the woman visiting from Edinburgh *destroys* me), feels shallower here, and I just don't really buy the climactic moment when Clarissa's learns of Septimus's story and begins to ruminate on his life & death. Clarissa seems like, well, me, and millions of others; suffering from depression, haunted by regret, borne back ceaselessly into the past, and while that's perfectly fascinating I just can't make emotional sense of parallelling that state of being with shellshock-induced paranoid schizophrenia.
I understand and appreciate Cunningham's view that 'Mrs. Dalloway is a book about a London that had been changed forever, superimposed over a London determined to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. Clarissa would stand in for all those who still believed in flowers and parties; Septimus for those who’d been harmed beyond any powers of recovery.' It makes perfect sense on an intellectual level, I just wish I felt as emotionally invested and moved by those final pages as I did by the rest. Still, I look forward to returning, and returning, and returning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/books/review/michael-cunningham-on-virginia-woolfs-literary-revolution.html
Beautiful! It took me a little bit to get into it. I was really thrown off at first by the long sentences connected with semi colon after semi colon. After I got passed that, I fell madly in love with this book. Wonderful!
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
lighthearted
reflective
medium-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
I don't know that I ever would have read this book had it not been for a class assignment, and I don't know if I'll ever read it again, honestly. It felt like being in Mrs. Bennet's brain the entire time, and it made me realize that if given the chance, I would NOT want mind reading as a superpower!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide