Explorations Read-Aloud: “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf

Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.

For October 17, Coté will read aloud from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

In this vivid portrait of a single day in a woman’s life, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess.

As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, she is flooded with remembrances of the past – the passionate loves of her carefree youth, her practical choice of husband, and the approach and retreat of war. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old.

From the introspective Clarissa to the lover who never fully recovered from her rejection to a war-ravaged stranger in the park, the characters and scope of Mrs. Dalloway reshape our sense of ordinary life and reshaped English literature as we know it.

Mrs. Dalloway is commonly thought to be a response to James Joyce’s Ulysses. Both novels use the stream of consciousness technique to follow the thoughts of two characters, one older and one younger, during one day in a bustling city.

In October 2005, Mrs Dalloway was included on TIME Magazine‘s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since its first issue in 1923.

Click the links to find the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page.

Thoughts to share? Book ideas to suggest?
Contact Joseph at friday-explorations@usa.net