The action of Mrs. Dalloway (1925) takes place during a single day in June 1923 in London, England. The story begins as Clarissa Dalloway takes a walk to buy flowers for her party taking place that evening. All the characters are introduced on the way; and there are many and not all of them really relate to Clarissa. It’s a kind of six-degrees-of-separations game. This person knows this other person who knows this doctor who is friends with the Dalloway family. Everyone mentioned in the book are somehow paid homage to in the party, whether they are there or just mentioned.
I started reading Woolf just six months ago, my first book was Orlando. This one was the second. And, as Orlando, Mrs. Dalloway is a very slow progress. There’s no real story; it’s just more or less normal people doing their daily things. I’ve noticed that Woolf has a penchant for long, complicated sentences and I, for one, have sometimes difficulty following her thoughts.
As a reading experience Mrs. Dalloway was captivating. When you got to the flow of the text, it proceeded fluently. But you really had to think about the text and the story, sometimes. The characters – at least almost all of them – were very interesting; to me, Septimus was the best. I could relate to him the best, somehow. Sometimes it was very unclear whether I was reading someone’s thoughts or just the story, they were so intermingled.
Most of the time I really enjoy Woolf’s stories, but I can’t really recommend them as a light reading, albeit they are most of them not that long. Mrs. Dalloway was only 219 pages long, but it took me over two weeks to read. This book isn’t easy, but is gratifying.
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