Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway
Book Review: Almost a story without a story ...
Summary: 4 Stars
"Mrs. Dalloway" is almost a story without a story. At first sight the plot of this book seems almost banal. After all, who wants to know how Clarissa Dalloway spends her day?. Isn't she merely a shallow woman who leds a boring life?.
Of course, we should remember that first impressions are often misleading... and in this case, they certainly are. "Mrs. Dalloway" is nothing less that a ground-breaking novel in which Virginia Woolf pioneers a style that would later be called "stream of consciousness". Thanks to that style the reader can, literally, read the thoughts of the characters without any kind of censorship. Even though that makes the book somewhat unclear at times, it is nonetheless strangely attractive, and compelling.
"Mrs. Dalloway" is the story of a day in Clarissa's life, but it is at the same time the story of the people who know her, or that are somehow connected to her, and the story of her/their dreams and thoughts. Virginia Woolf's goal in this book was ambitious, but she managed to achive it: she allows the reader to look right into the mind of the different characters...
As I previously mentioned, the story of Mrs. Dalloway is at the same time the story of many more, as the story of each of us is also the story of the people we know/love/hate/like/dislike. There are many people who help us to understand Clarissa, thanks to their interactions with her. However, we also see her under a different light thanks to characters that don't know her, or are merely distantly connected to her through one of her many acquaintances. For example, Septimus Warren Smith, an ex-soldier who battles madness, and whose gloomy life provides a stark contrast to the artificial cheerfulness of Clarissa's own life. The two never meet, but it is impossible to try to understand one without the other...
On the whole, I think you will enjoy this book. It is quite original, and gives the reader food for thought. It makes us realize that there is often more to people than what meets the eye. For that, I highly recommend "Mrs. Dalloway" to you.
Belen Alcat
Book Review: Amazing
Summary: 5 Stars
Please pick up this book. It is profound and intensely moving. The imagery is wonderful, and the ideas delivered burn to the core. I am an avid reader, and can easily say that this is one of the greatest books I have ever read. It is not only pleasurable, but didactic.Book Review: An example of literary excellence
Summary: 5 Stars
This is by far Woolf's best novel, her most touching, her most brilliant... Mrs. Dalloway is an absolute classicBook Review: An expanding web
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a spellweaver of a book, slipping lucidly from minute to minute over the course of a perfect London summer's day, its gossamer threads forming an expanding web as complex and interconnected as a symphony. I came to it after reading TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, written two years later (1925 and 1927). Both books are set in summer, and both are confined to a single physical setting. But whereas the house and garden in TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, nominally in Scotland, might almost be anywhere, London is a real and precise presence in MRS DALLOWAY, lovingly described over a range of several miles. The later book, though concentrating on two specific days, has a span of almost a decade; MRS DALLOWAY follows the classical unity of time, starting in the early morning and continuing until night in a single unbroken span (a precedent perhaps imitated by Ian McEwan in his SATURDAY). Conversely, while TO THE LIGHTHOUSE confines itself to about a dozen characters, MRS DALLOWAY moves in ever-expanding ripples, adding more and more people as guests arrive for Clarissa Dalloway's party in the book's concluding scene.
The hours of the day are marked by the sound of Big Ben: "First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air." The image of expanding and dissipating circles is central; as in TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, Woolf is preoccupied with the passage of time; both books are a memento mori. But neither one is grim; there is a summer freshness here, a feeling for the charm of society life in a great city, that fits the preliminary musical chimes of the great clock -- but the irrevocable toll of time is not forgotten. We see Clarissa Dalloway, a little over fifty, wife of a respected politician with an assured place in society. Like the sound of the clock, like ripples on the water, her circles have also expanded since her marriage, but have they also dissipated, dissolved in the air? Near the beginning of the book, she is visited by Peter Walsh, a former suitor whom she refused some thirty years before, now back home after many years in India. Both of them have changed, but the memories take her back and force her to weigh and reweigh her concepts of success and happiness.
All the characters in the novel are known personally to Clarissa Dalloway, with the exception of only two: Septimus Warren Smith and his Italian wife Lucrezia, whose story, weaving in and out of the main one, takes up about a fifth of the whole. Septimus, a clerk by profession but something of a poet and aesthete, has returned from the war unable to feel. When his best friend is killed in the last days of the war, he congratulates himself on surviving without cracking up, but soon begins to recognize his lack of emotion for the curse that it is; he married Lucrezia largely in an attempt to overcome this. He must be one of the first victims of shell-shock to appear in literature (but not the last: see Pat Barker's magnificent REGENERATION and, in a lighter vein, all of Jacqueline Winspear's MAISIE DOBBS series). Virtually everything in Woolf's mature novels is connected primarily by thought rather than through action, but this takes the principle even farther, linking Septimus to Clarissa in theme only, as her Doppelgänger; the author admitted as much in a later preface. In some ways they are opposites: Clarissa so full of life, a society hostess married to an establishment figure; and Septimus, potentially suicidal (like Woolf herself), a provincial nobody married to the daughter of a foreign innkeeper. And yet, for all his inability to feel, there is an immediacy to the scenes between Septimus and Lucrezia, whose lives are played out in emotional primary colors, whereas Clarissa's world, for all its brilliance, is in iridescent shimmers and half-tones.
And what of Mr. Richard Dalloway, MP? We see surprisingly little of him, but what we do see only emphasizes the theme of lost feeling that runs through the book. Something makes him realize that it has been years since he has told his wife of his love. So he buys a great bunch of flowers and we see him "walking across London to say to Clarissa in so many words that he loved her." The phrase is repeated again and again. When he does get home, the scene does not go quite like that, but it is a touching one all the same. For Richard is one of those Englishmen who can only show their feelings obliquely. Poor Peter Walsh, on the other hand, who weeps openly and is an emotional wreck, is considered a failure, "not quite the thing." And Clarissa, still precariously aware of both sides of her nature, must steer her way between the two. And we rejoice that she can.
Book Review: Another snorer, courtesy of V. Woolf
Summary: 2 Stars
Ahh... Mrs. Dalloway. Such a compelling title for what must certainly be a compelling book. I mean, how can a book averaging four stars, and written by the incomparable Virginia Woolf, be anything but spectacular? I'll tell you how. Because it's a mind-numbingly depressing piece that feels like it was written by a schizophrenic monkey on valium.
Yes, that's right folks - a Virginia Woolf novel filled with boringly depressing characters who do little but sit around and think about death and lost moments of life (*audience gasps in disbelief*). I know. Shocking. Praise the book all you want, but it's a typical Woolf novel that feels like the angst-filled poetry of today's emo teenagers.
So what happens in the book? Well, the "action" (heavy on the sarcasm) focuses on Clarissa Dalloway, who spends most of her time sitting on benches, looking at planes, and trying to commit suicide by sawing through her wrists with a comb... No wait, that last one was me, after reading about half of this novel. Sadly, I failed, but I did succeed in giving myself a mild concussion after banging my head against the back of my chair for half an hour. Anyways, Clarissa decides to throw a party, and that's when the action really takes off! Either that, or all the characters stand in corners staring at a wall and thinking about how they should've loved their puppy more when they were 6... I really don't remember (see above mentioned concussion).
In general, Virigina Woolf is a ridiculously over-rated author. It drives me nuts to hear elitist snobs approach literary orgasm whenever she is brought up in conversation. And anyone who does not like Woolf's writing is immediately decried as either too stupid to understand it, too lazy to spend the time deciphering her inane babble, or a punk college kid who just didn't want to read his assignment. A rather narrow view, indeed. There is room for disagreement here, folks.
So why the two stars? Well, I rated "To the Lighthouse" 1 star, and it just didn't seem fair to place this one on the same level as that disaster.
In closing, Virginia Woolf sucks. No, seriously. She's awful. Don't feel bad if you didn't like her books. It doesn't mean you're stupid. Many readers just ascribe to the Woolf camp to make themselves sound more intelligent. Even Woolf lovers don't understand what she was talking about, because really, it makes no sense. Take a look at the 5 star reviews here. Try to find one that doesn't use one of the following overly-used, meaningless cliches: "beautiful; timeless classic; stood the test of time; tortured artist; masterpiece of modernists prose; intimate look at life; you're shallow if you didn't like it". Now, if you look at the 1-stars, you'll see phrases like: "insane; meaningless; like eating gravel; overly-preachy; makes me want to bash myself in the head with a rock; glad she's dead". Which group do I find myself akin to? I think my review speaks for itself.