In 1923 England, Virginia Woolf struggles with debilitating headaches while writing the first sentences of Mrs. Dalloway. In 1949 California, Laura Brown, a pregnant housewife, feels suffocated by her domestic obligations and seeks refuge in Woolf’s novel. In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan, a book editor, plans a party for her former lover, Richard, a poet dying of AIDS. These three narratives intersect through the shared motif of a single day’s preparations and the looming presence of mortality, mental illness, and same-sex attraction.
Readers of literary fiction and queer history value this book for its intricate formal structure and its examination of female interiority. It appeals to those interested in how literary lineage shapes individual identity across generations. The reader walks away with an understanding of how small acts of domestic endurance coexist with profound existential despair. It provides a technical study of the stream-of-consciousness style while documenting the emotional labor required to maintain a facade of social normalcy.
Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Mindful Reader. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1998
- Language
- EN
