Virginia_woolf

Summary A mother tells a boy that he will be able to go to a nearby lighthouse. The father says that it is unlikely the boy will be able to go to the lighthouse because of bad weather. Ten years pass, the father finally takes the boy to the lighthouse. Thoughts As you can guess from the summary this is going to be one of those ‘modern’ books where nothing seems to happen. For some this will be a turn off, but if you find the endless twisting and turning of your mind during one of the thousands of mundane conversations that make up a life, then this book is for you. Similarly to Mrs. Dalloway, time and experience take on new meanings as a single day, seemingly chosen at random, is played out in intricate detail. The level of emotional data that is packed into everyday exchanges will be surprisingly to all but the most mindful. Woolf’s diaries indicate that she would spend hours listening to herself think, and the emotions that would arise as responses to external stimuli. She was able to bring this clarity to each of the characters in this book. Some take up more space than others, but with each, the reader feels like they are getting the unfiltered experience that the character themselves are having. Since Woolf is a modern writer, it is not good enough to watch someone do something, we must watch someone watching something be down. Being removed twice from anything is the price we must pay for this authentic experience. Whether the game is worth the candle will be up to each reader to decide on their own. I think it was, providing a unique way to convey emotion and setting. There are moods in this book that are difficult to find anywhere else, consider the following scene when we are briefly left without any narrator so the abandoned house itself takes up the thread: ...

After the first few paragraphs of this book, I was hooked. Amazing writing, beautiful story telling. Mrs. Dalloway follows the events of a random day in June in post WW1 England. There are unmistakable parallels between this and Joyce’s Ulysses, the main difference being that this was enjoyable to read while the other was decidedly not. We get to hear the stream of consciousness of many characters through which we are painted a picture of people, relationships, and events from multiple perspectives. To me the main theme of the book was time and society. We jump forward and backward in the day’s events, but the connecting string is the sound of Big Ben ticking away the hours. In some ways it seems to anchor the experiences, cutting short thoughts, connecting storylines, signaling the inevitable flow of things. The only thing more ever-present than time is society. One of my favorite characters is a man suffering from severe PTSD after losing a friend in the war. He is eventually driven mad, his remarks on “human nature” and its inability to put up with difference were very interesting and I feel like a key, albeit extreme version of what several other characters were experiencing. Identity is often looked at individualistically, but I think more and more that it only exists in relation. It is a nexus of desires comprised of many conflicting aspects, even within our own minds. This is shown nowhere more clearly than with the eponymous Mrs. Dalloway. This book was a great experience. Virginia Woolf ...