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12,539 ratings,
3.83
average rating, 923 reviews
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published
October 28th 2002
(first published 1925)
by Harcourt
binding
Hardcover, 216 pages
characters
isbn
0151009988
(isbn13: 9780151009985)
description
As Clarissa Dalloway walks through London on a fine June morning, a sky-writing plane captures her attention. Crowds stare upwards to decipher the me...more
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avg 3.83
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
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Read in January, 2005
recommends it for:
broke, book-loving teenagers and anyone else looking for a cheap high
Okay, so this is very fabulous novel and in my opinion one of the Greatest, despite the fact that for me it was not exactly a breeze to get through. I mean, it wasn't painful or anything, but nor was it one I just sat down and plowed through like a maniac until I was through. I carried the thing around with me for awhile and poked at it in fits and starts over a period of time. I think Virginia Woolf is a genius, but there's something kind of inaccessible about her to me, maybe because I'm not a...more
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9 comments
Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
lovers of semi-colons and minutia
My reasoning for reading this book are three-fold:
- I'd tried once and gotten about 3/4 of the way through, but never finished
- It is by Virginia Woolf, who was discussed in Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft, a book about writing, as an example of great use of sentence length and complex syntax
- Woolf's A Room of One's Own was discussed in my literary theory class as one of the seminal books of Feminist theory, and Mrs. Dalloway is very much a women's novel focusing in on...more
- I'd tried once and gotten about 3/4 of the way through, but never finished
- It is by Virginia Woolf, who was discussed in Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft, a book about writing, as an example of great use of sentence length and complex syntax
- Woolf's A Room of One's Own was discussed in my literary theory class as one of the seminal books of Feminist theory, and Mrs. Dalloway is very much a women's novel focusing in on...more
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Read in January, 2007
Although Mrs. Dalloway was my first foray into Woolf's fiction (I had only read her essay collections A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas), it did not take long for me to become utterly enthralled in this novel. The experience of reading Mrs. Dalloway is similar to viewing an impressionistic painting—just as the eye flits over images, shadows, and suggestions of objects in a Monet or a Degas piece, a reader engrossed in Mrs. Dalloway will find that the language carries you along as Woolf dep...more
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Read in April, 2008
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not I think they deserve the label
Book #15: Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (1925)
The story in a nutshell:
For those who don't know, mos...more
The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not I think they deserve the label
Book #15: Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (1925)
The story in a nutshell:
For those who don't know, mos...more
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(6 people liked it)
1 comment
Read in March, 2003
recommends it for:
people to whom the words 'death in life' actually mean anything
I feel odd reviewing Mrs Dalloway just days after writing a lecture-length review of The Hours, which touches upon much the same themes. Yet I think I'll give it a try.
Mrs Dalloway portrays a day in the lives of various people living in London in 1923. At the heart of the novel is Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran who is suffering from shell shock and schizophrenia. Septimus' descent into madness (clearly modelled on Virginia Woolf's own) and relationship with his spouse are juxt...more
Mrs Dalloway portrays a day in the lives of various people living in London in 1923. At the heart of the novel is Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran who is suffering from shell shock and schizophrenia. Septimus' descent into madness (clearly modelled on Virginia Woolf's own) and relationship with his spouse are juxt...more
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Read in January, 2008
Although I only gave Mrs. Dalloway two stars, I should clarify that that represents quite a gain, because I have long despised this book. When I read it as an undergraduate, my 19 year-old-self found it self-indulgent, overly emotional, and extremely tedious. My 36 year-old-self, I was pleased to discover, is slightly more tolerant and more patient than its younger version. So while I will never truly be a fan of Virginia Woolf--or, for that matter, Modernist Novels in general (excepting...more
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Read in November, 2008
recommends it for:
le monde
I loved this book, but not quite as much as I was hoping. The stream of consciousness style Woolf uses is brilliantly expressive and I was constantly surprised by how clearly she used it to portray character. The likenening of her style to that of the cinema (panning from character to character, moving in for a close-up, then moving on; as well as the use of techniques such as flashbacks and montages) mentioned in the introduction struck me as very apt. Clarissa Dalloway's dauntless vivacity and...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
Everyone
Mrs. Dalloway is not by title alone enough to intrigue me - it was the movie The Hours that even made me want to look at anything by Virginia Woolf. I had seen the movie, 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' but that didn't really do it for me either. After the Hours, I picked up the book, and it promptly sat on my shelf after a half-baked attempt to read it ended within the first few pages.
Its flow, the rhythm, threw me off at first. My brain is easily distracted, and the book's prose ...more
Its flow, the rhythm, threw me off at first. My brain is easily distracted, and the book's prose ...more
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خانم دالوي گفت خودش گلها را ميخرد
براي اين كه لوسي ترتيب بقيهي كارها را ميداد. درها را از چارچوبها بيرون ميآوردند؛ قرار بود كارگرهاي رامپلبري بيايند. كلاريسا دالاوي فكر كرد از اين گذشته عجب صبحي است - آنقدر تر و تازه است كه انگار آن را در ساحل براي بچهها نقاشي كرده...more
براي اين كه لوسي ترتيب بقيهي كارها را ميداد. درها را از چارچوبها بيرون ميآوردند؛ قرار بود كارگرهاي رامپلبري بيايند. كلاريسا دالاوي فكر كرد از اين گذشته عجب صبحي است - آنقدر تر و تازه است كه انگار آن را در ساحل براي بچهها نقاشي كرده...more
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I've got to hand it to the English teachers, they sure know how to pick 'em. An unprecedented 5 consecutive novels with no plot. This one's just as boring as Devil on the Cross and just as Cryptic as Zamyatin's We.
Some may praise the stream of consciousness as brilliant and innovative but it really just makes the text as undesirable of a read as possible. All of the characters are hypocritical and bland, and develop absolutely no sympathy. There is absolutely no plot, for a book tha...more
Some may praise the stream of consciousness as brilliant and innovative but it really just makes the text as undesirable of a read as possible. All of the characters are hypocritical and bland, and develop absolutely no sympathy. There is absolutely no plot, for a book tha...more
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9 comments
Read in May, 2008
It's not often that a sentence or two from a book will tell you very much, but I think the following passage should tell you right away whether you will like this book.
Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor...more
Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor...more
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Read in December, 2007
Most astonishing this time round was the anticipation in Woolf of the not-yet-existing Frankfurt school. Famously (so far as I know: I'm boning up on it this summer), the Frankfurt school discovered links between rationalism, positivism, and state violence; WWI and, later, fascism were not (or at least not simply) negations of the Enlightenment, but part of the same. With that in mind, reread Walsh and Richard Dalloway and their civilized, cynical pose toward Empire and its great projects, rerea...more
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Read in April, 2004
May Favorite book by my Favorite author Virginia Woolf.
Mrs. Dalloway is a story of one woman in a single day of her life. The novel opens with the first sentence - "Mrs. Dalloway said she shall buy the flowers herself." - Shows, so much of brightness, so much of hope, so much of possibility.
And then the lady walks past the Bond Street, London, and as she observes every thing that happens there, slowly the author shapes her character and her state of mind.
...more
Mrs. Dalloway is a story of one woman in a single day of her life. The novel opens with the first sentence - "Mrs. Dalloway said she shall buy the flowers herself." - Shows, so much of brightness, so much of hope, so much of possibility.
And then the lady walks past the Bond Street, London, and as she observes every thing that happens there, slowly the author shapes her character and her state of mind.
...more
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Read in September, 2007
Living up to the name Woolf assigned to the manuscript version - "The Hours," Mrs. Dalloway delves into the souls of several 1920s Londoners - each of varying socioeconomic backgrounds - in the course of one day. With Big Ben marking the time, the narrator follows Mrs. Dalloway as she plans a dinner party and encounters old friends, lovers, and memories. Not all these meetings are happy, however, and through the strangely prophetic character, Septimus Smith, the narrator offers gli...more
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bookshelves:
death,
england,
littlekrakowton-litchat-chit-chat,
penguin-modern-classics,
stories,
twentieth-century
Read in May, 2009
With an unhurried ease the River Ouse passes through the Sussex hillsides meandering it's way to join that stretch of sea which has successfully kept the English geographically aloof from their Continental cousins since before Domesday, even finding time en route for a spot of landscape gardening and to make a number of unscheduled social calls.
It was into this river that on an otherwise uneventful but, nonetheless, unforgiving Spring day during wartime, and having filled her pockets...more
It was into this river that on an otherwise uneventful but, nonetheless, unforgiving Spring day during wartime, and having filled her pockets...more
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This is my favorite book. It took me forever to get into Woolf's style, but once I did I fell in love. Every sentence is a work of art. Every paragraph's a poem. It's heat breaking & joyous & so full of life. "Mrs. Dalloway" deserves your full attention when reading it, but it's well worth it! Breathtaking.
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Read in January, 2004
I read it quite slowly. I only felt I liked it at the end.
***
am citit-o intr-un ritm destul de lent, nici nu prea cred ca woolf se citeste pe nerasuflate. n-am simtit ca-mi place decit la sfirsit :)
***
am citit-o intr-un ritm destul de lent, nici nu prea cred ca woolf se citeste pe nerasuflate. n-am simtit ca-mi place decit la sfirsit :)
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01/22/09
Maggie
marked it as to-read
Read in January, 2009
Someday, I will finish this book. It's just so bloody mind-numbing!
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
Everyone
One of my favorite novels, an outstanding analysis of the mind of a woman, with all her troubles and preoccupations. The exquisite (do I sound snobbish?) language in which it is written kept me reading until the end. Even in buses. It's a beautiful exploration of human feelings, and the way they get mixed up and drive us to unexpected actions. The melancholic feeling that is transmitted from the very first words, one of my favorite opening lines in all the books I've read, is catching and intens...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Iris by:
Compulsory, as it happened
Let's start with a semi - mini biography of Virginia Woolf. She was a bit depressed (well, she tried to kill herself twice, and succeeded the second time round), and it's definitely displayed in much of her work. Which can begin to put you down. Why did I read it then, you ask? Simple. Because it's in my syllabus.
The story follows Clarissa Dalloway, a middle - aged lady who likes to give extravagant parties, and is, in fact, hosting one that very evening. Taking place over the course...more
The story follows Clarissa Dalloway, a middle - aged lady who likes to give extravagant parties, and is, in fact, hosting one that very evening. Taking place over the course...more
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quotes from this book
"Big Ben struck the half hour.
How extraordinary it was, strange, yes, touching, to see the old lady (they had been neighbors ever so many years) move away from the window, as if she were attached to that sound, that string. Gigantic as it was, it had something to do with her. Down, down, into the midst of ordinary things the finger fell making the moment solemn. She was forced, so Clarissa imagined, by that sound, to move, to go - but where? Clarissa tried to follow her as she turned and disappeared, and could still just see her white cap moving at the back of the bedroom. She was still there moving about at the other end of the room. Why creeds and prayers and mackintoshes? when, thought Clarissa, that's the miracle, that's the mystery; that old lady, she meant, whom she could see going from chest of drawers to dressing table. She could still see her. And the supreme mystery, which Kilman might say she had solved, or Peter might say he had solved, but Clarissa didn't believe either of them had the ghost of an idea of solving, was simply this:
here was one room, there another. Did religion solve that, or love?"
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