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Summary: What a day!
Review: Virginia Woolf goes beyond merely describing the attitudes of a woman planning a party. Through social interactions and chance meetings, we meet a broad range of interesting characters struggling with the aftermath of not only life's decisions, but also the consequences of such societal ills as the Great War. The close of the book was an exceptional way to persuade readers to read more of Woolf's work, not becuase we will ever know what became of Clarissa and her lost love, but because we are intrigued by the life Woolf gives her characters in our own imaginations.
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Summary: Frankly, Virginia Woolf was/is a KNOWING book editor
Review: with "Hogarth Press." One has respect and gratitude for her entertwined characters lives and plot lines...if one has a sensibility. As to the man who favours Joyce. Joyce's sensibility it typically masculine, I favour Woolf's, being a woman. Both were experimenting. I don't see the reason to bash Joyce in a review on Virginia Woolf and I hardly think you're debunking good ole Ginny so much as bashing the "feminine aesthetic." The (ahem) person meanwhile who called for a better editor, I am a writer, and I have friends that are writers...NOT hack writers, writers of some merit and the "butchery" committed by many editors has been notorious throughout history. Editors, like "Hollywood Producers" are often not on the creative but on the $$$ end. That said, this is NOT always the case, I am also an editor myself, and...when it's for love of literature and not the market place you don't find formulaic interpretations which could be written into a scriptable software (and already have)! DO THIS DON'T DO THIS. This is not a recipe for the imagination, for invention, but for the repression "editor" who called "Portrait" names as well, descried. In the name of "Freedom of thought" you should bless this book as an eloquent tome to the imagination. Mrs. Dalloway's party is significant to HER in a way that another person may find significance in another mundane event which somehow, in the carrying out of it, is magnificently or horrificly "transformed" within our minds, our hearts, our souls. Septimus intrigues. He weaves with his wife into Clarissa's life. Septimus' so called "Shell Shock" is now known as PTSD. It is significant that Virginia Woolf knew and wrote of it. Living in an increasingly "pathologized" age where "psychiatrists" and "psychologists" must make their bread and butter by making up diseases of the week and haute "pharmaceutical" du jour, Clarissa's indictment of THAT profession, and of so called "charities" hoping to "expel" unwanted displaced populations could not be more timely. Mrs. Dalloway is a challenging, golden, interesting, lovely, and "naturally sapphic" (as we are in our adolescence) read. Go for it!!!
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Summary: flows smoothly from beginning to end
Review: What interested me about the book was the fact that it tied up so neatly, and also the fact that it really spoke to that one place in time where we mentally place oursleves. For Mrs. Dalloway that place is Bourton.
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Summary: unique!
Review: First book i ever read by virginia woolfe and i can't wait to read more of her. refreshingly different. very subtle plot and conclusion. i particularly enjoyed the passage in which she takes you to the park, and admits the reader into the thoughts of several visitors. It's like a panorama in words of the scene! masterfully done, like a watercolor in words.
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Summary: A wonderful evocation of London.
Review: Although I know that this book is a masterpiece of literature I liked it very much. I'm living in London now and found this book to be a wonderful evocation of the sights, sounds, and smells of the city--Westminster, Whitehall, Belgravia, Regents Park, etc., etc.-- especially as they must have been in the 20s. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in what London is and was like.
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Summary: This is my favorite by the phenomenal Virginia Woolf!
Review: A day in the life portrait that centers on Clarissa Dalloway, a wife of a wealthy politician, in 1920s London. This work looks at the affects of aging, the psychological impacts of the first World War, the role of friendships, how people view the past, and the complexity of human emotions. It makes the reader question what really is important in our lives. The descriptions put you right in the world of Mrs. Dalloway. Nobody does stream-of-consciousness like Virginia Woolf. And this book is stream-of-consciousness at its best. Definitely not an easy read, but well worth the time and effort. Read this book and you will be rewarded. If you get a chance, see the movie as well.
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Summary: Knowing What is Important and Living With Oneself
Review: Woolf's characters are endowed with personalities that jump off the page, enter the reader's imagination, and seemingly run wild. Her words have the power to evoke memories and feelings that are all too real and oh so captivating as she paints a portrait of a world that could be yours or mine or anyone's. In Mrs. Dalloway, she parallels the life of a snobbish, upper-class woman with the life of a shell-shocked survivor of World War I to prompt the reader to consider what really matters in life and what is perhaps less consequential.
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Summary: awful book from fraudulent writer
Review: let me say first that i have no objections to modernism and rather liked joyce's _Portrait_. woolf in the modern tradition, has some new ideas of breaking the traditional forms, in her case, of plot, and replacing it with a web of connected images to provide continuity. that's a lovely idea, virginia and i applaud you for your creativity, but this book had some of the most outrageously bad prose i have ever seen. the imagery is so incredibly forced i could hear the author grunting with strain. everyone i know who likes this book only does so because he or she was told by some professor that it's supposed to be good and can provide no evidence to confirm it. read joyce instead.
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Summary: A truly great piece of writing
Review: This is a really great book as an introduction into the style of stream of consciousness. I have read other famous pieces of stream of consciousness such as THE SOUND AND THE FURY and ULYSEES that I found almost impossible to takcle. However, this work while still containing all of the truly fascinating psychological intricancies that a good book of this style does, it does not lose the reader. The way to go about reading this book is to just give yourself over to the free-fall that you will experience. You will be very richly rewarded by it
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Summary: A classic book that is still a joy
Review: I believe it was Lionel Trilling who said that if it's true that a book reads you as much as you read a book, certain books had found him at first difficult and boring, but had eventually grown friendly. "Mrs. Dalloway" found me to be -- when I first attempted to read it in high school -- a dull, even fragile creature; but with time the book made way for me in its life, and now we are rather fond acquaintances. Virginia Woolf is, of course, one of The Greats, but despite this debilitating label she is a writer whose books are addictive to any energetic and patient reader who is in love with the English language. Language is certainly not the only beauty in Woolf's work, but it is the aspect of her writing that first drew my amazed attention. She is in many ways an impressionist, a literary Monet, while we Americans are more comfortable with naturalists and expressionists, so perhaps a reader new to Woolf would need to exercise a few mind muscles which haven't had much attention paid to them, but this isnot a bad thing. And there's a good chance I'm wrong, a good chance that I'm taking my own particular weaknesses and ascribing them to the readership at large. (Oh well.) The point is this: give "Mrs. Dalloway" a chance. Go to it blind, without assumptions, with an open mind and curious heart. I think the book will find you to be a very engaging person, full of wonders and mystery.
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