Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

This was another Christmas present, again from my dad. I'd somehow made it this far in my life without reading any Virginia Woolf, although I had read The Hours several years ago, which lent at least the first part of Mrs. Dalloway a somewhat eerie déjà vu.

The omniscient perspective, it has always seemed to me, is a tricky voice to pull off in a novel, but Woolf handles it with aplomb. And, wow, if I thought The Manticore was hypermetacognitive, this one easily beats it, despite the former's use of psychoanalytical terminology, by sheer numbers of those cogitating.

It's a short novel, but neither compact nor concise; I found it took much longer and demanded more concentration than anything else I'd read recently. It was accordingly also somewhat tiring, because of its intricate descriptions, meandering sentences, and a nagging sensation (at least for me) that something very bad was going to happen. Still, its understanding and depiction of depression, madness, and the relationships between men and women were fascinating, and perhaps more so given its location in a very specific time and place. I don't have a desire to return to it any time soon, but am very glad to have read it and to have experienced the Woolf.