Mrs. Dalloway
Classics, Fiction
Virginia Woolf
Mariner Books
May 14, 1925
eBook
204
English
May 11, 2023 May 22, 2023
8 Books in Another Language 2023, Reading by the Numbers
Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway–a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significance–infusing it with the elemental conflict between death and life–Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist.
Originally published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway is Woolf’s first complete rendering of what she described as the “luminous envelope” of consciousness: a dazzling display of the mind’s inside as it plays over the brilliant surface and darker depths of reality.
About the book
I have absolutely no idea. Really. I read this book with the Fable book club and yes, honestly I always wanted to read it and so I took the opportunity because I think I would have never read it alone. But I found it so boring that I couldn’t pay attention to the plot.
What I think
I’ve never read Virginia Woolf, I studied her in high school in English class, but read from cover to cover, never. Although I had studied her, I could not remember anything of the style she used and therefore it was a surprise to see one long chapter. I don’t like this style, it makes me lose concentration and in fact I didn’t understand anything about the book. It may be that I read it in English, but I couldn’t get into the book. The only thing I’ve noticed is how many times the word queer and gay is used, with their meaning, not with the meaning we give them today. So much so that I had to translate them to figure out what the hell she was talking about.
I don’t think I’ll read any more of her unless I read a critique of the story first so I know what to expect.
