Mrs. Dalloway

I am a little disappointed in this book. I figured this would be a quick read to introduce me to Virginia Woolf; I had heard a lot of good things about her writing. My take away is filler.

Mrs. Dalloway is one day in Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway’s life, a fifty-something woman who lives the snobbish high life of post WWI English society. She is throwing a shindig and it just so happens that one of her best friends who she friend zoned many years ago is back in town from being in India. While she sits on her couch fixing a dress and taking a break to nap, a war veteran, a Septimus Warren Smith, and his foreign wife visit another doctor who could tell them what is wrong with him, for he is depressed and talks about killing himself. In modern terms, it is PTSD and he depressed with what has become of him.

It reminds me of Mean Girls in a way; where no one can stop talking about Clarissa and how fabulous she is even though they flip it around and say how terribly cad and snobbish she is. She knows how great she is, no one needs to remind her. She also recognizes that her schtick in high society is hosting parties, and even though that bothers her, she knows that is how she has to do things to stay in high society.

I did enjoy Woolf’s writing, it is descriptive to a fault where again it becomes a ridiculous amount of filler, but it flows very nicely. I do not know if it was just the version I had, but I thought there should have been more chapter, or paragraph breaks in the text; you have to follow it closely to catch on to multitude of flashbacks that are stuck in the middle of paragraphs, or else you get lost easily. I am glad I decided to listen to an audio version of it at the same time. I liked the one I found on Youtube that I will share because the narrator did really well at setting a proper pace so that when I went to go try and read on my own I was able to give appropriate pauses between lines. I guess I was used to speed reading.

I do not think I would read this again for the drabbiness of it. I might try another Virginia Woolf book with the hope that Mrs. Dalloway was just a fluke thing. If you wanted to try reading it, I would try here. Apparently, though, the reviews tend to go negative, but at least I got you to Amazon.

5/10