Mrs Dalloway
Since I absolutely loved The Great Gatsby, I wrote "books like The Great Gatsby" in Google. It suggested to me Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, and I can tell you that it's a pretty lazy suggestion, thanks. Apart from the fact that it takes place in the same period and that we have access to the intimate thoughts of the characters (find me a book that does not give not access to the intimate thoughts of the characters and I would be more impressed), for me, there is nothing similar between these two novels. For I loved one, and rather hated the other.
Summary
A woman in her fifties, married to an English bourgeois, prepares a reception and thinks about things. Among other things, she wonders what her life would have been like if, instead of marrying this bourgeois, she had chosen her childhood sweetheart.
Impressions
I abandoned this book twice along the way. And that was after I switched from English to French because I couldn't understand anything and thought it must be the language.
When I started again in French, I realized that I had actually understood it very well. It was just not clear.
The first time I gave up on it, I did so because I felt like the story wasn't going anywhere and frankly, I was bored. I picked it up afterwards because I thought it was a classic, it was a short book and who knows, maybe it would eventually take off.
Halfway through the book, I gave up because I knew it would never take off. Then I picked it up again because there really wasn't much left and at least it would give me a review.
And, as if in the middle of a page, it ended. All for this.
It is certainly a classic for a reason. Surely at the time (it was published in the 1920s) it was original. I'm sure there are things to analyze in this novel and maybe we even realize eventually that it is full of wonders.
Maybe I did. But I didn't feel like trying to analyze, or read someone else's analysis. Through my semi-ignorant eyes, I was rather bored.
I will find a similar novel for real for the Great Gatsby.
