“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

Thus begins the classic novel “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf.

I was first aquainted with Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway through the novel “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham, which is a wonderful book. I’ve been meaning to get around to this novel for a long time. It is also on the Time’s top 100 novels list, which I thought would be an excellent spot to look for some summer reading material. Though, to be honest, after reading this book I feel like I need to find something really cheesy and fun for my next summer reading selection.

Not that Mrs. Dalloway wasn’t a good book. It is. Virginia Woolf was on the forefront of Modernist writing. The book is beautifully written and poetic. It is very stream of consciousness. One character will be walking down the street thinking about something and pass by another character and the story will immediatly flip over to their point of view. The transitions are seemless and lovely and the wording, beautiful. I love how she uses parentheses and commas with such abandon. Sentences are terribly long. It is how I often think and write.

I’m going to add an excerpt. This scene is from the point of view of Peter Walsh, the man Mrs. Dalloway (Clarissa), may have married. This is a memory of Peter’s.

“He had never felt so happy in the whole of his life! Without a word they made it up. They walked down to the lake. He had twenty minutes of perfect happiness. Her voice, her laugh, her dress (something floating, white, crimson), her spirit, her adventurousness; she made them all disembark and explore the island; she startled a hen; she laughed; she sang. And all the time, he knew perfectly well, Dalloway was falling in love with her; she was falling in love with Dalloway; but it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing mattered. They sat on the ground and talked- he and Clarissa. They went in and out of each other’s minds without any effort. And then in a second it was over. He said to himself as they were getting into the boat, “She will marry that man,” dully, without any resentment; but it was an obvious thing. Dalloway would marry Clarissa.”

However, I was terribly disappointed by the book. Not a lot happens. The climax seemed anti-climactic and the ending, unsatisfying.

The book has many different story lines, but there are two main ones. Mrs. Dalloway is planning a party for the evening. The whole story takes place in one day. Throughout the day, she encounters people from her past and reminisces about what her life could have been like if she had made different decisions.

The other central story line is about Septimus, a war veteran going through severe post tramatic stress disorder and possibly other mental imbalances. He goes through his day and kills himself at the end of it.

The two story lines only cross at the “climax” of the book, when someone happens to mention at Mrs. Dalloway’s party about Septimus’s story and how he killed himself. Mrs. Dalloway then has a moment of reflection about this loss of life.

My biggest problem with the book is that there was no denoument. No, resolution. All of these storylines are headed together, and at the very end Mrs. Dalloway is about to reunite with her longtime friends, and then it ends. We don’t get to see the reunion. I read the last page and started flipping through the back of the book looking for more and was sad to see that it was over.

The style and writing make this book truly lovely. However, I feel that the story could have been more satisfying. It is an interesting read, but certainly did not become a favorite. It is more like reading a really, really long poem than a novel. Maybe that is what Modernist writing is all about. I’ve been meaning to read “Ulysses” as well, but with all the commentary on “Mrs. Dalloway” that I’ve read that compares the two stylistically, I’m a little nervous.

But, I’m not going to give up on my mission to read classics! I love discovering wonderful old books. I also like rereading books that were assigned to me in high school that I hated at the time. Mostly, I have come to love these books when I read them as an adult. I remember really disliking “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and “The Awakening” in high school, but love both books as an adult. I think they choose the wrong books for teenagers to read.

Maybe I’ll reread “Mrs. Dalloway” ten years from now and love it. I’ll just have to wait and see.