My Amazon and Goodreads review of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Rating 5) – Human Experience Refracted Through the Lens of an Ordinary Day. After reading two recent articles about how Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf revolutionized the novel, I was chagrined that as novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I’d never read it. Having now repaired this lapse, I am in awe of what Woolf wrought. Barely stopping for a page break, the book fluidly transitions from past to present, exterior to interior, delight to despair, comedy to tragedy. Woolf passes the narrative baton between Clarissa Dalloway and others, eventually returning to the party whose preparations consume her morning and whose arrival consummates her evening. Human experience — thoughts and feelings, memories and dreams, regrets and rewards — is refracted through the lens of an ordinary day. From this mundane microcosm emerges a world of teeming complexity. As Clarissa Dalloway’s erstwhile beau Peter Walsh opines, “Having done things millions of times enriched them.”
