A classic book and Ms. Woolf's most well known work. The book details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares to serve as hostess at a party in London after the first World War. This novel will also find itself in another category as one of my projects is to add a few classical titles to my reading repertoire- I am starting with the "W's"as authors such Woolf, Waugh, and Wharton have always intrigued my reading self.
I picked up a used copy that was quite marked up. I was intrigued because this reader seemed to be pulling occult references out of Woolf's writing but alas she/he quickly lost steam and apparently interest in the book. Mrs. Woolf's novel actually turns out to be less about the party preparations than it is a "stream of thought" perspective from different POV of various characters as the narrative shifts from Clarissa to the minds of others both known and unknown to Mrs. Dalloway. The novel looks into the stream of consciousness of various men and women across many classes at a particularly challenging moment in British society as the nation struggled to recover from the first World War.
To me, Clarissa remains as much of a mystery at the end as she did at the beginning as this narrative is mostly told through the thoughts of others both in regard to their own thoughts about Clarissa (if they know her) and in regard to their own thoughts about their lives as they move about London on this particular day. It was all neatly connected through the interactions of characters--at times like a "six degrees of separation" type of experience.
While I don't read a lot of "literature"--all this deeper meaning and allegory--made for some stuffy pretentious college seminars and maybe to "classical literature" fans this is what makes for an important must read book but frankly for me this constant search for meaning kills my reading joy--sometimes an author just likes to spin a good story along a theme she finds intriguing. I primarily read either to deepen my base of knowledge or for the pure pleasure of escape. The reading that I do for my profession often leads me to need a bit of palate cleansing so to speak.
I also frown upon reading a book simply because it is a "must read classic"--life is too short to waste reading a book simply because you think you should (or worse yet, other people judge you as lacking, sorry to disappoint but a lot of classics haven't even made it to a paper list of my #TBR).
Back to Mrs. Dalloway, I would have been more pleased if the book had stuck with Clarissa and her party--but that is not the story that Mrs. Woolf had in mind. But overall I did enjoy it as it was a very interesting look into the different types of lives lived by Londoners on that day. I find myself becoming fascinated by reading of the various means by which single women manage to live on the fringes of various societies.
This book has also added on to my #TBR pile as I very much want to read Woolf's A Room of Ones' Own and The Hours by Michael Cunningham, a work that won the Pulitzer Prize and features at least in part the reimagining of Mrs. Dalloway and if it is as promised reinvents and honors the work of Virginia Woolf. So yes I envision a Time themed category in my future.
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