Flush in The Virginia Woolf Reading Group

Mar 05, 2017 Olga rated it it was amazing

Love, love, love this book - this what I only think!

3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 02, 2019 Brent Woo rated it liked it

Shelves: what-the, woo-woolf, dogs

Kind of strange. But the idea grabs me: Virginia Woolf got it in her head in 1933 to write a story from the perspective of a dog. I didn't realize that this a semi-seriously a "biography": the owner of Flush is the real poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the story told through the dog's eyes is a real story. It's still a third person narrator but it follows the dog Flush and narrates his inner thoughts and reactions (mostly confusion) to some bewildering cross-country moves and harrowing encoun Kind of strange. But the idea grabs me: Virginia Woolf got it in her head in 1933 to write a story from the perspective of a dog. I didn't realize that this a semi-seriously a "biography": the owner of Flush is the real poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the story told through the dog's eyes is a real story. It's still a third person narrator but it follows the dog Flush and narrates his inner thoughts and reactions (mostly confusion) to some bewildering cross-country moves and harrowing encounters with men.

Woolf is definitely present in the writing. Classic burns and descriptions all over:

The mating of Dr. Mitford's ancestors had been carried on with such wanton disregard for principles that no bench of judges could have admitted his claim to be well bred or have allowed him to perpetuate his kind.

And this kind of proustian waxing, some may accuse of being purple but I savor. This is a passage (one sentence!) that just begs to be read aloud:

Indeed, when the world seems tumbling to ruin, and civilisation rocks on its foundations, one has only to go to Wimpole Street; to pace that avenue; to survey those houses; to consider their uniformity; to marvel at the window curtains and their consistency; to admire the brass knockers and their regularity; to observe butchers tendering joints and cooks receiving them; to reckon the incomes of the inhabitants and infer their consequent submission to the laws of God and man—one has only to go to Wimpole St and drink deep of the peace breathed by authority in order to heave a sigh of thankfulness that, while Corinth has fallen and Messina has tumbled, while crowns have blown down in the wind and old Empires have gone up in flames, Wimpole St has remained unmoved and, turning from Wimpole St into Oxford St, a prayer rises in the heart and bursts from the lips that not a brick of Wimpole St may be re-pointed, not a curtain washed, not a butcher fail to tender or a cook to receive the sirloin, the haunch, the breast, the ribs of mutton and beef for ever and ever, for as long as Wimpole St remains, civilisation is secure.

The story and execution fall flat. It seems to climax very early on, with a kidnapping being the only really exciting episode, and then the last half is just him existing in different countries. I guess it's a real story so there's no faking life or timelines, but surely there was a better way to stretch or mold the presentation so it doesn't end so sleepily.

Something different from Mrs Dalloway or Orlando or To the Lighthouse is that Flush clearly occurs in one of those basic landed gentry households, scenes pretty indistinguishable (for me) from what is strongly associated with Jane Austen. That is, just a bunch of Mr's and Mrs's and Misses walking in and out a dusty room having dinner and talking and changing. That's all anyone does. I don't immediately dismiss anything like that, but it's not something I'd have associated with Woolf having only read the other three. Another category where Flush doesn't meet the bar of the others is of course the psychological component. Part of the appeal of Dalloway and Lighthouse is the 'unsaid', the scenes where nothing is going on on the surface but plenty is going on interior to the characters. None of that here. The dog is not tortured that Mrs Barrett put on her left shoe first rather than the right shoe. So what does the "dog" perspective give? By the end I didn't really know, other than it being a cute way to kind of obfuscate an otherwise plain plot.

A "nice" story, only worth it for its novel conception, and probably only worth it for the completionist. ...more

Like · see review