Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway –a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significance–infusing it with the elemental conflict between death and life–Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist. (www.goodreads.com)
This was a very chaotic story. I rarely had the immersion I usually have while reading early 20th century novels. This one seemed a bit unhinged, which made it difficult to follow every perspective. I suspect I skimmed a lot of passages for being 'all over the place', in which I could've found some ulterior motive or theme for this novel.
The novel turns the subject of 'lost love' over and over again, to show it from different angles, making it unique in some ways but with a common theme.. love lost between a man and a woman, because of choosing someone else, love lost between friends because of different life styles, love lost between a married couple because of illness, love lost between a mother and daughter because of different views on the worlds. All this loss is shown against a scene, a party, which is invoked to portray a certain hope, but feels hopeless nonetheless.
It isn't the first novel I've read of Virginia Woolf.. other novels seemed a bit more structured, in which every character gets the space to voice its fears, hopes and general outlook towards the past, present and future.
In Mrs Dalloway all these people are trying to speak at once, or so it seems, which just makes for a lot of noise. That's exactly how I felt when I skipped some parts, trying to leave a noisy room to clear your head. Of course life doesn't wait turns, and it's the feeling that Woolf wanted to invoke, but it did damage the reading experience for me.
I stuck with it though, mainly because I know she writes well. Mrs Dalloway lost a bit of its momentum towards the end, leaving more room for reflection, but for me it was too little too late, although the very last sentence did pack a punch.
