It’s just the most stunning film, please see it. Philip Glass’s soundtrack is supernaturally good (in Absurd Review’s stories this week). The script by David Hare is perfect, as are the performances. This is bookish heresy but I think the film is even better than the book. Louis, Richard’s former lover, surprises Clarissa. I was casually flicking through the channels, watched it, liked it, spotted the book in the library at sixth form by chance, and so the obsession began. The doorbell rings as Clarissa Vaughn prepares for the party that night for Richard. This new edition of one of Virginia Woolf’s most celebrated novels features an introduction by Michael Cunningham, acclaimed bestselling author of The Hours.

To tell you the truth, I discovered The Hours through the film. But you can start with The Hours – I did, and that’s how I discovered Mrs Dalloway and ‘The Classics’ as a teenager. If you have read one, the other will be that much more satisfying with all the references and parallels. The Hours (the original working title Woolf had for Mrs Dalloway) depicts one day in the life of these women, with themes in common with Woolf’s novel, such as the power of the trivial and of quotidian experiences, memory and regret.It does have elements of stream of consciousness but it is much more formally traditional than Mrs Dalloway. Her friend and former lover who calls her Mrs Dalloway is dying from a disease and, like Septimus in the original novel (and Woolf in real life), hears voices singing in Greek. In the late 1990s, Clarissa Vaughan’s day mirrors Dalloway’s in Woolf’s novel, but modernised to fit the 20 th century and give Vaughan her own unique character. Laura Brown, an unhappy housewife, reads it in 1949. In the book, Virgnia Woolf writes Mrs Dalloway in 1923. The book is a/n(?) homage, or reworking, of Mrs Dalloway. Meet, or revisit, The Hours by Michael Cunningham. I did promise a Dalloway week so I thought I’d expand the Dalloway horizon today. I hope you had a good Dalloway Day yesterday and on Monday.

The hours mrs dalloway