Mrs. Dalloway in Never too Late to Read Classics

Aug 14, 2014 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: love, relationships, great-britain, 2014-read, ww1, audible-us, hf, classics, england, philo-psychol

When I express how I feel for Woolf's writing it is only in superlatives...... Yes, the writing is amazing. When I look at how I feel for the book as a whole, I feel it deserves less stars. Why? Is it the British upper-crust characters she weaves her story around that is the stumbling block for me? I believe so.

Writing using her unique stream of consciousness narrative, the primary themes of this book are personal relationships, the aftermath of WW1 and British colonization of India, not the eve When I express how I feel for Woolf's writing it is only in superlatives...... Yes, the writing is amazing. When I look at how I feel for the book as a whole, I feel it deserves less stars. Why? Is it the British upper-crust characters she weaves her story around that is the stumbling block for me? I believe so.

Writing using her unique stream of consciousness narrative, the primary themes of this book are personal relationships, the aftermath of WW1 and British colonization of India, not the events per se but their effect on individuals. The year is 1923 and Mrs. Dalloway has planned a sumptuous party for the coming evening. She is fifty-two. What happens on this one day is the story, but every encounter is influenced by past events and personal relationships. The reader is told past events through the thoughts of all the different characters, and a little dialog. That dialog is pitch-perfect. “That is my Elizabeth” has a completely different significance than the words “That is Elizabeth.” Think in terms of your own daughter! Would your daughter react the same to the two different wordings? Elizabeth is Mrs. Dalloway’s teen-age daughter. Everyone Mrs. Dalloway meets that day and how she relates to each and every one of them is influenced by past events. There is a shell-shocked war veteran and a special boyfriend from the past that happens to drop by. The meshing of past events and history and relationships is flawless. . Although British upper- crust society of the inter-war years is superbly drawn, it is the relationships between the numerous characters that captivated me.

At that party in the evening of that summer day, you, the reader, feel the tingle of excitement. As the hours slip by the mood changes and you feel that too. The food has been served, the excitement and tensions subside, people start getting tipsy, and what is said then?

Juliet Stevenson's narration was very good, except that she should have been able to voice male thoughts a bit differently than women's. Men’s and women's thoughts sound identical, and this is confusing. She does capture the different classes of people. I do believe that it is much easier to follow stream of consciousness writing through listening rather than reading.

The book is cerebral. It presents characters’ thoughts. Honest thoughts because no one censors our thoughts! It looks at relationships. What would be going through your head if you one day ran into that boy you fell for thirty years ago? Virginia Woolf captures all of this accurately. Think carefully, and don't just think; let yourself feel how you would feel. This is what the book delivers. And yet I am giving this four stars, not five, because my emotional response to the book is that I like it very much. Perhaps it is because I am a stranger to that high-society circle of friends that the book focuses upon.

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May 24, 2012 Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, gutenberg, e-books, read-2012, british-literature, fiction-20th-century, audio-books

Free download available at Project Gutenberg

From BBC Radio 4:
Virginia Woolf's classic novel set on a single day in June. Lives interweave on the streets of London as Clarissa Dalloway makes her final preparations for an important party.

Virginia Woolf spent the First World War on the Home front mainly in London. It was an anxious time; she lost several cousins in the conflict, and her brother-in-law Cecil Woolf died at the Front; in 1915 she suffered a mental breakdown.

For Woolf the war had chang ...more

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Sep 26, 2021 Susannah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: listened-to-audiobook, reading-the-classics

I'm very happy finally to have read Mrs. Dalloway. I've resisted it for a long time because I was intimidated by the stream-of-consciousness style of Virginia Woolf's writing style, but listening to the audiobook, I was able to avoid getting too mired in the writing or getting distracted by the lack of dialogue.

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Sep 03, 2020 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-literature, e-books, fiction-20th-century, gutenberg, novellas, proofreading, free-literature, read-2020, short-stories

Free download available at Project Gutenberg

The original short story version of Mrs. Dalloway as published in The Dial, Vol. LXXV (July to December) in 1923.

I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and Project Gutenberg will publish it. ...more

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Apr 02, 2020 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Fourth time, I think.

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May 28, 2016 Karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001

I had started The Hours by Michael Cunningham before realizing that I needed to read Mrs. Dalloway first. I am not a huge fan of Stream-of-consciousness writing style, but I did like sections of this book. I am not going to review this book, because there are volumes already out there on this book. My favorite character was Septimus, a WWI veteran suffering from PTSD. In the end, I liked this book, and I am glad I read it. ...more

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Jun 03, 2018 Meika rated it really liked it

This book had some exquisite moments. There were stretches of prose that didn't have to mean anything because they were so lovely, views of characters that reveal the depths of human compassion, and literary forms that qualify the book as a work of art.

The story itself is almost transparent in that the narrative of Mrs. Dalloway isn't substantial compared to the roles of all the characters around her. This is like looking at a link-node diagram, where Mrs. Dalloway might be a hub, her party bei This book had some exquisite moments. There were stretches of prose that didn't have to mean anything because they were so lovely, views of characters that reveal the depths of human compassion, and literary forms that qualify the book as a work of art.

The story itself is almost transparent in that the narrative of Mrs. Dalloway isn't substantial compared to the roles of all the characters around her. This is like looking at a link-node diagram, where Mrs. Dalloway might be a hub, her party being the central event that connects all the characters who have points of view. The third-degree connections (Septimus) are important in that they impact the emotional state of other participants. But my thought is that we're meant to see the story as a web, and the perspectives define the relationships between nodes. We're also given the dimension of time, though we're not given an analog unfolding of time; we're given access to memory of events told from the points of view of the participants, so we have more context to understand the characters. And we are anchored by the tolling of clocks in the span of one day - from when Mrs. Dalloway leaves to get flowers, to when the party guests trickle away.

This temporal and link-node structure acts as a substrate for the billowing, formless stream of consciousness that gives you an intimate view into the minds and emotions of each of the characters. None of them is a reliable narrator, each out of touch with a full understanding of the other and relying on their assumptions and prejudices. Mrs. Dalloway and Ms. Kilman, Peter Walsh and Septimus and Rezia, and so on. When they hit on something insightful, we're able to see the uncanny. And this can appear regardless of direct connection - the link between Clarissa and Septimus. This is where the deep emotional revelations come from. WE can see that Peter is in love with Clarissa, even if he can't. We can see how Sir William Bradshaw connects Septimus and Mrs. Dalloway, and that they are alike in their emotional perception of him.

All that said, I didn't really like it. I know. I must be missing something... I liked it well enough and I recognize the significance and it held me gently enough, but it felt like work to read it.

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