JL SMITHER
  • Home
  • About JL
  • Blog
  • Writing
    • Short stories and poems
    • Novel (in-progress)
    • Nonfiction
  • Comic
    • Monster at the Institute
    • The Hunter

Blog.

Review (love note) of Mrs. Dalloway

9/3/2018

 
Picture
Picture
Woolf, Virginia. 1925. Mrs. Dalloway. London: Hogbarth Press.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/472097665
Mrs. Dalloway is one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing. This most recent read was not the first and won’t be the last. Like The Great Gatsby, this is a novel I’ll revisit over and over again throughout my life, gleaning new perspectives and a new respect for it every time.

What do I love? The balance of detail between physical actions and internal monologue, including how one influences the other. The empathetic rendering of not just the POV characters, but every character, so you feel exactly what they’re feeling, in the full context of their lives. The contrast between Clarissa’s life and Septimus’s life, both so important, so essential, although not in obvious ways. The weaving together of their storylines throughout this single day in London. Their reactions to love, to ambition, to societal expectations. Their interactions with the secondary characters, and the secondary characters’ reactions to them, which we also see in stunningly honest detail. And so much more.

I reached out for Mrs. Dalloway on instinct, like looking for a rocky outcropping after a shipwreck, as antidote to the state Ulysses left me in. Of course, Woolf was reading Ulysses while writing this, so that’s no coincidence. Although scholars, and even friends, may disagree, I think these two show Woolf’s blatant superiority to Joyce. He may have written an “important” novel, but it’s unreadable and unrelatable.

Woolf shows that, as a skillful, careful writer, she can tell a deeply personal story about a single day through multiple first-person accounts and make it enjoyable and emotional. Not just readable, it’s re-readable, over and over.

Comments are closed.

    Categories

    All
    Authors
    Classics
    Comic
    Fiction
    Five Stars
    Four Stars
    Non Fiction
    Novel
    Original Work
    Review
    Short Stories
    Thoughts
    Three Stars
    Two Stars

    Read my reviews on

    Picture

    Archives

    April 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    October 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    October 2013
    February 2013

Creative Commons License
The writing made available on this site by JL Smither is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

  • Home
  • About JL
  • Blog
  • Writing
    • Short stories and poems
    • Novel (in-progress)
    • Nonfiction
  • Comic
    • Monster at the Institute
    • The Hunter