Synopsis (credit: back cover)

Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is shell-shocked and on the brink of madness. Smith's day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends, their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax.

Past, present and future are brought together one momentous June day in 1923.

On the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die List.

(Bought second-hand at CAFDA Charity Bookshop, Regent Avenue, Sea Point.)

The book forms part of my permanent collection.

This is the first book by Virginia Woolf that resonated with me. It's a remarkable book on a number of levels.

Having just recently read Ulysses by James Joyce, two aspects reminded me of the book: the stream-of-consciousness writing style and the fact that the book plays out in one 24-hour period. Mrs Dalloway was imminently more readable.

It's a reflective work in which the passage of time plays a large role.

"Shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks of Harley Street nibbled at the June day, counselled submission, upheld authority, and pointed out in chorus the supreme advantages of a sense of proportion, until the mound of time was so far diminished that a commercial clock, suspended above a shop in Oxford Street, announced, genially and fraternally, as if it were a pleasure to Messrs Rigby and Lowndes to give the information gratis, that it was half-past one."

And yet, getting older has its advantages.

"The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this: that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained — at last! — the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence — the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light."

After reading this book, I read The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Highly recommended.