Mrs Dalloway (Penguin Clothbound Classics)

livre en bon état

Envoi rapide et conforme

I re-read this novel after many years and was struck new by its flawless, though unorthodox, construction, leading you through the inner thoughts of characters linked to one another and their environment by the events and circumstances of one day. In addition to this, Woolf manages to consider, in a glancing way, crucial social questions including the aftermath of the First World War, the position of women and the inadequacies of mental healthcare. It is a masterpiece.

Great high-edition that makes you want to read this classic again and again. Perfect delivery. Excellent reliable service.

I love the prose. The dialogues.A characterdriven novel, superb...Recommendation to all lovers of beautiful and inteligent dritten plots...

Wer auf der Suche nach einer spannenden Lektüre ist, sollte sich dieses Buch nicht kaufen. Die Autorin überzeugt weniger mit einer fesselnden Handlung, als vielmehr durch ihr treffsicheres Portrait der Londoner Gesellschaft ihrer Zeit. Die Beschreibung der Gedankenwelt ihrer Charaktere ist sowohl stilsicher, als auch äußerst einfühlsam.

If you are into Virginia Woolf this book is a MUST. If this is the first book by the author you might not finish it. It is a classic if you are interested in Women's literature, especially first half of the 20th century.

Das Buch ist alles in allem gut verarbeitet. Nichts besonderes für ein paperback. Im Text sollte man allerdings besser nicht radieren, da die Seiten nicht behandelt sind.

Fear not! This Kindle eBook is a great read for no money.The book was published in 1925 and became famous for its innovative narrative style that influenced the development of modern literature: The story is told by means of interior monologue and stream of consciousness mostly instead of a traditional narrator who would guide the reader through the story. Therefore it's not always easy to understand the coherences, the reader has to make some efforts. But you can do it and it's worth it.Regarding the storyline, it is only one day in the life of the protagonist Clarissa Dalloway and some other persons in London of the year 1923.If aging and reviewing your former life and decisions is an issue for you, you may find some stuff in the book to think about.I watched the film recently, and afterwards I read the book, I found it very impressive.The Kindle edition is well made.

After only a half page of introduction about Virginia Woolf , the readers are suddenly caught into the world which is both inward and outward microscope- like.What did the person think, act and how was the ambience .... light ,smell. movement of air?The author put her soul into just a droplet of water , then reflect the life of the characters in it with the rhythm of second hand of a clock.This is my summarised impression on Virginia Woolf.People who can touch the genius literature with this compact book are so lucky!This novel never includes difficult terminology , it is consisted of quite easy and simple vocabularies ,in a word, '' Page Turner''.However, it is worth to be regarded as an interpretation about humanity and philosophy.There are no appendixes or groceries etc after the plot.

"Wealth makes many friends,But the poor is separated from his friend." -- Proverbs 19:4 (NKJV)Think of Mrs. Dalloway as being the anti-Ulysses (the James Joyce's masterpiece). The concepts for the novels are similar, but the styles are polar opposites. I recommend becoming familiar with both works in order to appreciate the different ways that character studies can be developed during a day by relying extensively on thought life. Both are brilliant, but in much different ways.Mrs. Dalloway is English, delicate, fussy, ornate, and feminine. Ulysses is Irish, crude, unrestrained, common, and masculine.What stands out the most about Mrs. Dalloway are the many original descriptive sentences and phrases that look as though they went through 200 rewritings to be so polished and complete. Their expressions overwhelm the story at time because the reader is left gasping at a stunning turn of phrase or an idea. In writing, you can sit and admire and forget to read on.A blessing of listening to the excellent reading by Virginia Leishman is that the brilliant writing is better integrated into the story by forcing you to keep going. I enjoyed the experience. I don't want to discourage you from reading the book first, but I believe you will appreciate the overall craft more if you listen before reading. It's the same advice I provide for William Faulkner's books. There's a beauty in the oral expression that is otherwise lost.I found the story to feel a little dated. I also found myself not being terribly engaged by Mrs. Dalloway or her husband. That's a pretty big problem to have when listening to or reading a novel. Someone today who wrote historical fiction about this period would do it differently.Naturally, if I were only rating the marvelous ornate writing, this would be five stars. Most writers can only sit back in awe of such writing. On my best day, I wouldn't be worthy of holding a candle for Virginia Woolf.Enjoy!

Though there are some passing resemblances to Jane Austen, the comedy of manners, and Victorian narrative satire, this is a modernist novel and a fairly accessible introduction to Woolf, unless the reader is overly impatient or tone-deaf. Woolf creates a character's interior life through a virtuosic, highly mobile third-person narrator, who might be thought of as the character's "persona," not merely "expressing" the character's thoughts but "mirroring" how the character perceives him or herself as seen by others. Moreover, the indefinite pronouns can shift unexpectedly or occur in too close proximity to make identification easy or even definite. As a result, the reader has to work overtime to achieve entrance into the mind of the "right" character while simultaneously sensing the liquid, interpenetrating and shared qualities of human identity itself. And finally there's that tone, now soft, now loud, and rarely without irony.Woolf makes it fairly easy on the reader with the broad, sardonic strokes she uses to paint the practically villainous Sir William Bradshaw, the eminent psychiatrist viewed by many (especially himself) as the scientific high priest of this cross-section of deluded London luminaries; and she's equally nasty to her other "villain," Miss Kilman, a repressed and embittered born-again Christian who, like Sir William, lives by the code of "conversion," Woolf's euphemism for those powerful personalities who are bent upon breaking, controlling and dominating the will of anyone not strong enough to resist them. The other portraits are more subtle, requiring the reader either to hear the soft, nuanced ironical tones or risk missing both the social satire and the character. Woolf's targets range, perhaps not surprisingly, from the pretense, pride, and hypocrisy of an out-of-touch social stratum that clings to the "orderly" past; to the arrogance of modern medical "science"; to, more surprisingly, the suffocating alternatives offered by both religion and love. She uses the term "Human Nature" ironically, making it refer to those individuals who cannot see with understanding, empathy or vision, substituting for "life" the ego's own conventional, reductive and limited sense of a world that's all surface and order.Readers lured to this novel because of Cunningham's "The Hours" (novel or film) may be disappointed or quickly frustrated. Moving from Cunningham to Woolf is a bit like going from Fitzgerald to Faulkner, or from Austen to Shakespeare. What you immediately notice is the far greater range and more inclusive thematic focus and, most importantly, the sheer power and vitality of the prose (from fluid motion to dynamic rush). Woolf--like Joyce, Faulkner, and Shakespeare--employs a syntax that can cause the head to spin and the earth: she's a writer who represents not merely individual characters but captures a microcosm of life not to mention the life of language itself.The greatest challenge "Mrs. Dalloway" presents to a first-time reader is never to let up. It's essential to stay with Clarissa throughout her entire day, finally becoming a fully engaged participant in the party itself--the final thirty pages of the novel, which contain some of Woolf's best writing. Especially critical is the extended moment, almost 20 pages into the party scene, when Clarissa, like Septimus, walks to the window and has her epiphany. It's a moment highly reminiscent of Gabriel Conroy's singular internal struggle and ultimate attainment of vision in the closing paragraphs of "The Dead" (Woolf was not especially fond of Joyce, but it's hard to believe she was not influenced by him). At that moment, Clarissa sees her affinity and even oneness with Septimus, a character who suffers internally but is capable of resisting the worse alternative of the "cures" offered by Dr. Bradshaw, one of the guests at Clarissa's own party. The insight produces action: one character chooses death; the other, life. But Woolf enables us to see these apparently opposite choices as existential cognates: both characters make choices that enable them to save their souls. (The "Death of the Soul" is a theme introduced early in the novel by the insightful Peter, a "failure" by society's standards and his own admission and someone who cannot get the better of his fixations--on the irretrievable past and his own youth. By the story's end, it is not Peter but Clarissa who presents a whole and integrated self, capable of separating the illusory from the real, of the once dependent "Mrs. Dalloway" from the newly enlightened "Clarissa."Cunningham is a first-rate stylist and craftsman who can tell a story that's moving and evocative, a narrative, moreover, that connects with today's readers by affirming the choices available to the self. But it feels like a mechanical assembly next to the vibrant novel that is its source and inspiration. Ms. Woolf, like her character Clarissa, knows how to throw a party.

Day in the life in post-War London, told in stream of consciousness narrative centering mainly on the title character, a middle-aged upper-class British matron as she prepares for a party, and also told from the perspectives of her unsuccessful suitor, her bland husband, her daughter and her daughter's tutor, and an unrelated veteran and his long-suffering Italian war-bride.Woolf will occasionally fly into an inspired combination of words that offer an honest glimpse of life and love that is both profound and awe-inspiring. But the absence of any plot structure leaves the reader not particularly caring how the party turns out, or what these generally boring people are thinking about.I feel stupid for admitting this, but my honest reaction to this book was: "Huh?"