Her parties! That was it! Her parties! Both of them criticised her very unfairly, laughed at her very unjustly, for her parties. It was a feeling, some unpleasant feeling, earlier in the day perhaps something that Peter had said, combined with some depression of her own, in her bedroom, taking off her hat and what Richard had said had added to it, but what had he said? There were his roses. Here Woolf captures the moment perfectly:īut-but-why did she suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperately unhappy? As a person who has dropped some grain of pearl or diamond into the grass and parts the tall blades very carefully, this way and that, and searches here and there vainly, and at last spies it there at the roots, so she went through one thing and another no, it was not Sally Seton saying that Richard would never be in the Cabinet because he had a second-class brain (it came back to her) no, she did not mind that nor was it to do with Elizabeth either and Doris Kilman those were facts. Have you ever had your mind so preoccupied with “stuff” that sometimes a passing comment triggers a strange feeling of not quite right–ness, a feeling which stems from the ability of your subconscious to somehow absorb the comment even while the conscious part of your brain has not yet had time to process it? This happens to me all the time, and that nagging feeling persists until I find time to reflect on what has caused it. But although quoting long passages in a Goodreads review is not usually my modus operandi, I feel I must do so here just to demonstrate my point.

In short, this novel contains some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever seen in print e-ink (welcome to the 21st century, Mrs D).

But I do know that the effort to get back onto her belt are handsomely rewarded. Whether this is a result of my own inabilities or whether Woolf’s dreamy style leads me naturally astray into my own wanderings, I do not know. But at times, I find myself falling off the conveyor belt.

For the most part, the ride is smooth as Woolf transitions from one consciousness to another. Dalloway is like being a piece of luggage on an airport conveyor belt, traversing lazily through a crowd of passengers, over and around and back again, but with the added bonus of being able to read people’s thoughts as they pass this one checking his flight schedule, that one arguing with his wife, the one over there struggling with her cart, bumping into those arguing and checking.

Mrs dalloway novel