Review - Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway

I had read Leonard Woolf but just one book by Virginia Woolf before. Mrs Dalloway for me was not an easy read but I wanted to read it through to see what all the excitement was about. The book deals with the life of a woman in a single day going through the whole gamut of emotions and feelings of Clarissa Dalloway mainly - though other characters are also caught up in the moment.

Where Clarissa Dalloway thinks of how life could have been different if she took different decisions and the way she thinks of what she could be and is now not. I think these feelings of introspection come to all of us and particularly when one is middle aged!!! The fact that sometimes we seem invisible and of no importance in the general plan of things and for Clarissa it was only Peter who saw her as Clarissa and not Mrs someone or the other .

This is not what one would call an easy read. I do not think I have quite grasped the nuances that Woolf expected me to see in the first reading. Maybe I will come back to it when things are quieter and I am able to assimilate it more. It was depressing at times but at the same time it drew you in. You needed to see how it went right upto the end. I will come to this book again for sure.