About this title: Influenced by Joyce's ULYSSES, Virginia Woolf's novel takes place within a 24-hour period and includes a stroll through the London streets that resembles Leopold Bloom's walk around Dublin. Woolf's narrative is structured out of the internal thoughts of characters Septimus Smith, the young, shell-shocked World War I veteran, and Clarissa Dalloway, ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9780140185690ISBN:0140185690
Description: Good. Paperbacks are previously owned. They are all in readable condition. They may have previous owners stamps, labels or names written or on them. The covers and spine may have creasing from previously being read. The corners may be bumped and there may be a small number of bent pages. Older books may have fading/discoloration due to light exposure. * read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Harcourt, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1964
ISBN-13:9780156628631ISBN:0156628635
Description: Good. 0156628635 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harvest Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780156628709ISBN:0156628708
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. Return Policy Any defects, damages, or material differences with your item, must be reported to us within 7 days of receipt of the item or 30 days from date of shipment. The returned merchandise must be ... read more
Description: Good. 0140622217 Different Cover. (Impressionistic portrait) Binding square and tight, with spine creasing. No other creases. Pages clean and unmarked. Free Upgrade to Expedited Shipping. Satisfaction guaranteed. Ships Immediately from CA. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"While reading her works, I get the impression that Virginia Woolf knows everything about people and that she understands life better than anyone, ever. Is there a single hidden feeling or uncommon perspective with which she is not intimately acquainted? And does anyone else draw forth these feelings and perspectives with more grace and empathy, and impart them to us in such a lush, inimitable fashion? Perhaps. But you'd never think that while immersed in her exquisite, adult dramas. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf's able to achieve complete well-roundedness for a half-dozen people in a smattering of pages; where each person is valuable and each is misguided, where disagreements truly have two (or more) reasonable sides, where issues of right wrong black white are utterly absent, dismissed as child's play, uninteresting. Woolf allows her characters to hate as well as to love, and everyone must expose their private, raw feelings to the reader.
I want to get to know Virginia Woolf; I want to absorb her wisdom and to see the world through her eyes, with her soul: wise, beautiful, understanding. She's one of the few authors whose writing is so evocative and filled with human beings so well-drawn that I frequently drift into thoughts of my own life, comparing myself to Peter Walsh or Clarissa Dalloway or Hugh Whitbread or Sally Seton, ferreting out my own shortcomings as I see them gently spread out in Woolf's oh-so-real characters. Many people who've read Woolf's shorter works admit surprise at how long it takes to finish them, even if one is fully engrossed. I think this is why: her writing invokes open-ended reverie that's profoundly personal and inescapable.
Woolf's prose is fantastic, although I prefer that of To the Lighthouse, which has a haunted, ethereal beauty that's better-fit for the Isle of Skye than for London's busy streets. Still, she has a poetic way with descriptions that I find so aesthetically pleasing. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. Is there a better (better-sounding, at least) description of Big Ben's tolling? In many passages, the stops and starts feel abrupt, strange to the reading mind. But for whatever reason, it simply feels right; always just enough and never more.
It's difficult to discuss or sum up the plot of this book, which moves fluidly from the streaming conscious of one character to the next. This passing of the story-telling baton is so subtle, however, that I can't remember a single transition. None. These moments would likely deserve study and genuflection in an inevitable rereading. I suspect that Mrs. Dalloway is one of those books you can not only reread and enjoy at different stages in life, but one that will offer distinct new pleasures and wisdoms at each stage. In other words, it's the best kind of book.
Mrs. Dalloway ultimately builds toward the title character's dinner party, but I actually found this finale to be somewhat less interesting than the parts that came before. We're introduced to many new characters in the final 25 pages, which, despite the fact that each one gets no more than a paragraph of time (and some must share), is something of a nuisance after becoming attached to five or six major players. She wraps things up well with the mainstays though, and the ending manages to be both understated and stirring, providing the readers with the pain and relief that comes with confession.
Upon finishing, the first thing that popped into my mind was Radiohead: Everything. In its right place."
"With an unhurried ease the River Ouse passes through the Sussex hillsides meandering it's way to join that stretch of sea which has successfully kept the English geographically aloof from their Continental cousins since before Domesday, even finding time en route for a spot of landscape gardening and to make a number of unscheduled social calls.
It was into this river that on an otherwise uneventful but, nonetheless, unforgiving Spring day during wartime, and having filled her pockets full of complicit pebbles, Virginia Woolf waded out to end her life.
Likewise, plunging into Mrs Dalloway, the reader, with a nearly breathless surrendering, slips between the surrogate streamsofconsciousness that set off a sort of emotional Brownian motion: characters collide, events conspire, there is the party to be prepared for; meantime, in the midst of it's own busy indifference a single day unturns towards the evening.
This is no multi-faceted act of ventriloquism: these economically acute character sketches share the tone of a single, singularly lyrical, narrative voice."
"One of my favorite novels, an outstanding analysis of the mind of a woman, with all her troubles and preoccupations. The exquisite (do I sound snobbish?) language in which it is written kept me reading until the end. Even in buses. It's a beautiful exploration of human feelings, and the way they get mixed up and drive us to unexpected actions. The melancholic feeling that is transmitted from the very first words, one of my favorite opening lines in all the books I've read, is catching and intense. I don't think it's Woolf's best, but I guess it's the most accessible."
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