amelie's 20 cent thoughts

Mrs. Dalloway is a book about a single day in the lives of people in 1923 London, but the simplicity of the setting is misleading. The book is both subtle and complex. Virginia Woolf crafts her novel by giving readers tools to understand multiple layers of meanings in interactions between characters, such as intersubjectivity and two-track narrations, and the continuous use of a stream-of-consciousness writing style. Two parallel scenes stick out as examples of this technique; the interactions Peter and Richard have individually with Clarissa, where they each surprise her by meeting her in her home. In these scenes, the reader is understanding between the lines, piecing together what they understand of the scene with context from outside of it. We jump from the perspectives of one character to another smoothly, seeing the disparities between what they say and what they feel. This leads to a deeper understanding of the interactions and relationships between characters.  Peter Walsh ...

" I love the constancy of shine on the edges of moving objects. Even propellors or desk fans will glint  steadily in certain places in the grayness of their rotation; the curve of each fan blade picks up the light  for an instant on its circuit and then hands it off to its successor."  (3) Few books have left me with such a strong aftertaste as The Mezzanine has. In the book, Nicholson manages to create a character with a unique permanence, both for his relatability and for his surprises. He lingers in your head and in the small things of life, when you sweep your floor or put your straw in your drink, tie your shoelaces or ride up an escalator. This dual aspect of Howie's character, his intense relatability and foreignness at the same time, is established since the first page in passages like this one. We have all seen fans move, and seen the sunlight shine on fan blades. We can trace their rotation, admire the light flickering, and convince ourselves we are like Howie i...