Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I should have learned my lesson from To The Lighthouse, but that was a long time ago. I had forgotten that Woolf gets so wrapped up describing her characters that they never have time to actually do anything. Here’s the basic plot: Clarissa Dalloway is throwing a dinner party. Peter, a man who has pined after her for 30 years, stands in her living room and cries briefly. A WWI soldier goes bonkers and jumps out a window to his death. That’s it. But I pity Virginia Woolf, I really do, because you can see her in the novel, trying to work it all out, trying to convince herself that there is a God and that people are actually genuine and tolerable, but we all know that she ultimately throws her hands in the air and drowns herself. Favorite Quote: “A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. He had been in the army. Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought.”