• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway

Stewart

Stewart

Active Member
Has anyone read this?

The book is really annoying me at the moment. I'm fifty pages in and nothing has happened, which is fine in and of itself, but it's the way that nothing is happening. Well, nothing may be an incorrect notion as Clarissa Dalloway has bought some flowers, watched a plane write 'toffee' in the sky, and had a brief conversation with an old love. But fifty pages!

I'm wondering if I should just forget it; decide, perhaps, if Virginia Woolf is not for me, or nor me at this point in my life. I don't like to abandon books, preferring to toil toward the end - and, at one hundred and seventy-two pages, it is a short novel - but I''m giving serious thought to dismissing this novel from my interest.

I'd appreciate others' thoughts.
 
I have not read Mrs Dalloway, but I've read To the Lighthouse and short stories and what you are talking about is typical of Virginia Woolf - no much happening, centrered in relationships between characters, in what they think, more in what they do not do or say than in what they do or say and how things affect them, change them.
Do you like her writing style, though? If you do, that is enough reason to continue.
 
clueless said:
Do you like her writing style, though? If you do, that is enough reason to continue.
Click to expand...

Sometimes.

"Fear no more," said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.
Click to expand...

That's the most memorable passage I can recall of the fifty pages I've conquered. It's annoying as there are nice passages which work; and then there are those that are overly punctuated and repetitive which make me believe the novel should just have been presented in a series of stanzas to make it savourable.
 
Stewart said:
The book is really annoying me at the moment...I'm wondering if I should just forget it; decide, perhaps, if Virginia Woolf is not for me, or nor me at this point in my life.
Click to expand...
I'd say your feelings towards Mrs Dalloway pretty much mirror my own. I tried to give Virginia Woolf a fair crack of the whip by reading Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and a collection of some of her shorter works; each time hoping I'd discover a 'way in' to her writing style. Apart from the odd scene in Orlando I found it pretty hard going and ended up deciding that she was 'not for me, or nor me at this point in my life.'

Regards,

K-S
 
I love Virginia Woolf and have read everything (I think) that she's written. I count To the Lighthouse among the best books.

In Woolf's case, as clueless said (I think), nothing happening is exactly the point. Nothing happens the way--in a way--nothing happens in life. Her subject is more the way we organize the world, the way we are essentially alone in our lives despite the human furnishings. There's a pained empathy in a lot of it that's a little precious and the domesticity can be irritating, but under that is something unique.
 
Welcome to Woolf. Nothing happening is indeed pretty much Woolf. You should have started with The Years, her less 'experimental' book. However, even with this, you have to kind of 'get inside' characters' heads. I'd recommend Hermione Lee's bio of Woolf - it makes an excellent study aid.
 
I think I'll give this book a miss, afterall. Fifty pages and not enjoying it, for such a small book, is, I suppose, an indication that I'm going to spend in excess of a week trying to complete the following one hundred and twenty-two pages.

I have Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies with me, so I'll just start that on the train home in lieu of Woolf.

Thanks all for your comments.
 
I can add nothing to the previous comments, but say that I finished To The Lighthouse for one reason alone: It was required reading on our Literature syllabus this semester. So I struggled through and never have I liked a book less.

After the first 50 or so pages I wanted to stop, but fought on out of necessity and I am disappointed that I found no redeeming qualities in it, so my stubbornness was all in vain.

So I'd say, if you don't like her after 50 pages you might as well save yourself the trouble of reading the rest until the day comes when Woolf might appeal to you.
 
Stewart, my advice is that you keep at it, but focus on Peter Walsh. His story is like the other side of the coin to Clarissa's, and I happened to find it more compelling. It's a love story, or more precisely a story of failed love that the characters never got over. I loved this book, and re-read it just last week.
 
Doug Johnson said:
Dave Barry: "What I learned about plot is that you need one."
Click to expand...

Why do you keep quoting him; and who is he anyway?

I'm not bothered that it's plot is minimal; it's the pages and pages and pages that it takes to do something simple although not necessarily mundane.
 
Barry is a satirical syndicated columnist who is definitely not known for his novels, which are bits of humor thinly strung together with weak plot.
 
Read another 22 pages and it's still no use. About halfway through reading I noticed that I'd read ten pages about someone but, since he was only referred to as he, I had know idea who he was. I'm guessing it was the guy who turned up at the door from India. Walsh!
 
Stewart said:
Why do you keep quoting him
Click to expand...

Because I think it's relevant and funny. Plus, I like the idea that the writer who holds the record for using the word "Booger" has something relevant to say about Virginia Woolf.

(Personally, I think that Barry is not only funny, but an excellent writer. I don't, however, want to hijack this thread. If anyone wants to start a thread on writers who use the word "Booger" I'm in.)
 
Stewart said:
But highly irrelevant as he won his award for commentary and not fiction, which we are discussing.
Click to expand...

Well, he has written three fiction works:

Big Trouble (1999)
Tricky Business (2002)
Peter and the Starcatchers (2004)

Plus, if Dave Barry had written Mrs Dalloway, the novel would probably contain an exploding cow. Was that the kind of action you were looking for?
 
Doug Johnson said:
)

Plus, if Dave Barry had written Mrs Dalloway, the novel would probably contain an exploding cow. Was that the kind of action you were looking for?
Click to expand...

it might have livened it up a bit, i must admit.....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top