Shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks of Harley Street nibbled at the June day...
It is images like that that give me a feeling of exhilaration as I read Mrs Dalloway.
Finally I've picked this up again. My re-reading of Mrs Dalloway has been progressing painfully slowly but it's partly because the writing is so intense; a little bit goes a long way. Today I picked it up again after a hiatus of several months. The afternoon was warm and rainy and Mrs Dalloway was the perfect book to read on the balcony in between the batches of biscuits I was baking.
I'm beginning to realise what a socially aware novel this is. Woolf works important social and political changes such as the fall of the British Empire and the fall-out from the First World War into what is also an intensely psychological and internal narrative. That's probably not news to anyone else but I don't remember noticing this political aspect the first time I read the novel when I was an undergraduate.
Anyway, time now to head off to bed, listen to the rain fall on the roof and let a little more of Woolf's writing wash over me.
4 comments:
I read Mrs Dalloway for the first time earlier this year, it is an amazingly wonderful book.
It is, isn't it? I'm taking forever to read it though. I seem to enjoy it in small doses- a little bit goes a long way.
Reading Mrs Dalloway while eating homemade cakes... whow, it seems such a nice Sunday despite the rain!
It is such a marvellous book. You make me want to read it again; it's been a few years since I last read it.
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