Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway
Book Review: awful book from fraudulent writer
Summary: 1 Stars
let me say first that i have no objections to modernism and rather liked joyce's _Portrait_. woolf in the modern tradition, has some new ideas of breaking the traditional forms, in her case, of plot, and replacing it with a web of connected images to provide continuity. that's a lovely idea, virginia and i applaud you for your creativity, but this book had some of the most outrageously bad prose i have ever seen. the imagery is so incredibly forced i could hear the author grunting with strain. everyone i know who likes this book only does so because he or she was told by some professor that it's supposed to be good and can provide no evidence to confirm it. read joyce instead.Book Review: A truly great piece of writing
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a really great book as an introduction into the style of stream of consciousness. I have read other famous pieces of stream of consciousness such as THE SOUND AND THE FURY and ULYSEES that I found almost impossible to takcle. However, this work while still containing all of the truly fascinating psychological intricancies that a good book of this style does, it does not lose the reader. The way to go about reading this book is to just give yourself over to the free-fall that you will experience. You will be very richly rewarded by itBook Review: A classic book that is still a joy
Summary: 5 Stars
I believe it was Lionel Trilling who said that if it's true that a book reads you as much as you read a book, certain books had found him at first difficult and boring, but had eventually grown friendly. "Mrs. Dalloway" found me to be -- when I first attempted to read it in high school -- a dull, even fragile creature; but with time the book made way for me in its life, and now we are rather fond acquaintances. Virginia Woolf is, of course, one of The Greats, but despite this debilitating label she is a writer whose books are addictive to any energetic and patient reader who is in love with the English language. Language is certainly not the only beauty in Woolf's work, but it is the aspect of her writing that first drew my amazed attention. She is in many ways an impressionist, a literary Monet, while we Americans are more comfortable with naturalists and expressionists, so perhaps a reader new to Woolf would need to exercise a few mind muscles which haven't had much attention paid to them, but this isnot a bad thing. And there's a good chance I'm wrong, a good chance that I'm taking my own particular weaknesses and ascribing them to the readership at large. (Oh well.) The point is this: give "Mrs. Dalloway" a chance. Go to it blind, without assumptions, with an open mind and curious heart. I think the book will find you to be a very engaging person, full of wonders and mystery.Book Review: A not all together awful stream of consciousness book
Summary: 2 Stars
Mrs. Dalloway is a book very much like James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" which I can say makes it a hard recommendation. The point of view flows from one character to the next without any warning and many readers may be easily lost. I would not reccmond this as a first venture into the horridly confusing technique of Stream of Consciousness. Frankly, a knowing book editor would have helped this book a lot.
On the upside, there are some very serious Sapphic undertones to the rambling of the book which make it more interesting than James Joyce whining about how he got beaten by the other boys in boarding school. But there are similiar themes of repression in the two books.
The side plot involving Septimus Warren Smith and his wife Rezia was more interesting than Clarissa Dalloway and her silly party and repressed lesbian leanings