Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Mrs. Dalloway" at 100

Summary

Podcast Summary: Book Club - Let's Talk About 'Mrs. Dalloway' at 100

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Book Review
• Host/Author: The New York Times
• Episode: Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Mrs. Dalloway' at 100
• Release Date: June 27, 2025

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Introduction and Guest Introductions [00:35 - 02:24]

Gilbert Cruz opens the episode by introducing himself as the editor of the New York Times Book Review. He sets the stage for the Book Club's discussion, highlighting the centennial celebration of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Joining the conversation are:

• MJ Franklin: Host and editor at The New York Times Book Review.
• Joumana Khatib: A returning editor and regular podcast guest.
• Laura Thompson: A first-time guest and fact checker at the Book Review.

MJ Franklin warmly welcomes the guests, commending Joumana on her recent profile of author Jonas Hasan Kamiri and introduces Laura, who shares her personal journey to discovering Virginia Woolf through A Room of One's Own.

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Personal Connections to Mrs. Dalloway [02:24 - 05:08]

Laura Thompson recounts a poignant memory from her study abroad experience in England, where a Virginia Woolf scholar guided her and her classmates to the River Ouse—the site of Woolf's suicide. This experience deeply impacted her understanding of the novel's themes of mental health and societal pressures.

Joumana Khatib shares her unique connection with the book, describing how she read Mrs. Dalloway every summer for four years while working at a creative writing camp. She fondly recalls organizing "Dala Day" with friends, dedicating entire days to reading the novel together.

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Initial Reactions and General Impressions [05:08 - 16:00]

MJ Franklin asks the guests to share their overarching thoughts on Mrs. Dalloway. The consensus is one of admiration and appreciation for the novel's depth and emotional resonance.

• Joumana Khatib praises Woolf's ability to portray tactile and physical emotions, citing a scene where a former love interest, Peter, bursts into Clarissa Dalloway's house, reflecting on his grief [07:40]. She highlights how the novel's interiority allows readers to seamlessly transition between different characters' consciousness.

  "Woolf has this amazing ability to pass the baton from consciousness to consciousness between characters in a way that's quite seamless and I find very moving." [06:50]

• Laura Thompson emphasizes the novel's enduring relevance, noting how each reading unveils new layers and connections with the characters' lives. She relates her identification with characters like Septimus and Lucrezia, the latter being Septimus's wife, highlighting their groundedness and hopefulness despite their struggles.

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Reader Engagement and Online Reflections [12:24 - 14:14]

MJ Franklin shares insights from readers who participated in the online discussion:

• Celine from Dallas, Texas was surprised by the characters' timeless and relatable qualities, particularly the diverse forms of love depicted.
• Juliet from Seattle reflects on how Mrs. Dalloway was pioneering in its focus on an elderly woman's consciousness, a concept that has since become more commonplace in contemporary fiction.
• Cookin from New York appreciates the novel's exploration of missed opportunities and the pervasive presence of death in the characters' lives.

Joumana Khatib humorously imagines a crossover where Clarissa Dalloway receives a copy of All Four, celebrating the novel's lasting impact and inspiring fanfiction.

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Deep Dive: Themes and Modernism [16:00 - 27:45]

Laura Thompson delves into the revolutionary aspects of Mrs. Dalloway, highlighting its departure from traditional realism through its focus on characters' inner lives and consciousness. She connects this to the contemporary interest in psychoanalysis and the fragmented realities post-World War I.

MJ Franklin draws parallels between Woolf's modernist techniques and today's literary experiments that capture the fragmented nature of modern life, such as the influence of the internet and the "post-truth" era.

Joumana Khatib discusses the parallelism between Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith as echoes and foils of each other. She notes that eventually, Septimus was incorporated into the final version of the novel to balance Clarissa's character, adding depth and contrasting perspectives on life and death.

"It's impossible. I don't want this to sound macabre. I legitimately don't mean this as a macabre comment. But my understanding is that her work was really her life ballast." [16:54]

MJ Franklin reflects on the novel's capacity to embody complex societal and personal themes within its narrative structure, emphasizing the role of literature in articulating and exploring profound human experiences.

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Strategies for Engaging with Mrs. Dalloway [28:19 - 33:27]

MJ Franklin and the guests provide practical tips for readers who might find Mrs. Dalloway challenging:

• MJ Franklin suggests alternating between reading the text and listening to the audiobook, as well as reading passages aloud to better grasp Woolf's rhythmic prose. She also recommends pausing to reflect on the passage's significance, inspired by George Saunders' approach.

• Laura Thompson recommends utilizing annotated editions, such as Mervyn Jones' annotated version, to better understand historical and cultural references. She also advocates for a mindful reading approach, allowing oneself to daydream and fully inhabit the characters' experiences.

• Joumana Khatib emphasizes the importance of embracing the emotional and intellectual flow of the novel without striving to grasp every detail, allowing flexibility in engaging with the text.

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Final Reflections and Recommendations [33:27 - 41:59]

As the discussion winds down, the guests share their favorite aspects and beloved characters from the novel. Joumana expresses mixed feelings about the character Peter Walsh, while MJ Franklin shares a poignant quote describing Richard Dalloway's "adorable, divine simplicity."

Recommendations:

• Laura Thompson recommends The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, likening its stream-of-consciousness style to Woolf's work. She also suggests Less Bohemians by Edna O'Brien for readers seeking experimental narrative forms.

• MJ Franklin creates a comprehensive Virginia Woolf reading guide, including:

  • To the Lighthouse – For continued exploration of Woolf's narrative techniques.
  • Orlando – Celebrating gender fluidity and playful storytelling.
  • A Room of One's Own – For feminist perspectives and literary analysis.
  • Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown – Woolf's nonfiction insights on character construction.
  • The Hours by Michael Cunningham – A Pulitzer-winning homage to Mrs. Dalloway.

• Joumana Khatib also recommends Guess Headshot by Rita Bullock and Tilt by Emma Paty, both of which employ innovative narrative structures and deep interiority reminiscent of Woolf's style.

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Closing and Upcoming Book Club Announcement [41:59 - 43:41]

MJ Franklin wraps up the discussion, encouraging listeners to continue the conversation online and revealing the July Book Club selection:

• July Book Club Book: The Catch by Yrisa Daily Ward
  • Synopsis: A mind-bending thriller about twin sisters grappling with the sudden return of their mother, who appears unchanged after 30 years of presumed disappearance. The novel explores themes of reality, identity, and familial bonds.

Listeners are invited to join the next discussion on July 25th and engage with fellow readers through the New York Times Book Review platform.

Gilbert Cruz signs off, thanking the guests and encouraging listeners to subscribe for full access to New York Times podcasts.

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Notable Quotes:

• Joumana Khatib [06:50]:

  "Woolf has this amazing ability to pass the baton from consciousness to consciousness between characters in a way that's quite seamless and I find very moving."

• MJ Franklin [09:10]:

  "Thought Peter. It almost broke my heart too, he thought, and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly, beautiful with light from the sunken day."

• Joumana Khatib [16:54]:

  "I think the other thing, it's impossible. I don't want this to sound macabre. I legitimately don't mean this as a macabre comment. But my understanding is that her work was really her life ballast."

• Laura Thompson [35:45]:

  "She has one of the most indelible cockroach images in all of Latin American literature."

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Conclusion: The episode provides a comprehensive and intimate exploration of Mrs. Dalloway, celebrating its centennial through personal anecdotes, critical analysis, and reader engagement. The hosts and guests delve into the novel's intricate narrative style, enduring themes, and its significant place in literary modernism, offering valuable insights and recommendations for both new and seasoned readers.

Transcript

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[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. This week we come to you with our monthly book club roundtable, hosted as always by MJ Franklin. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. And joining MJ to discuss this American modernist masterpiece is Joumana Khatib, and regular guest here on the podcast, and Laura Thompson, first timer, but certainly, or hopefully not a last timer. Mj, over to you.

[MJ Franklin]

Hello and welcome to another book club episode of the Book Review podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review. And for this month's Book Review Book Club, we're talking about Mrs. Dalloway by one Virginia Woolf. We chose this book as our book club book because the novel turned 100 this year. Happy birthday, Mrs. Dalloway. And we thought to celebrate the book centenn, let's read it and talk about it. And to talk about it, I'm joined in the studio by two of my incredible colleagues. First up, a returning voice, you know and love, a fellow editor here at the New York Times Book Review, Jumana Khatib. Welcome back, Joumana.

[Joumana Khatib]

Hey, mj, I'm excited to be back. Thank you.

[MJ Franklin]

Thank you for coming back. And I also have a quick shout out. Joumana, you just wrote a wonderful profile of Jonas Hasan Kamiri, who has a new novel, the Sisters readers. Go check out that piece, Joumana. I love it whenever you write anything. And that one is so good.

[Joumana Khatib]

Well, thank you, mj. Yeah, it was fun. I got to talk about curses for like two weeks nonstop. It felt great.

[MJ Franklin]

The dream, the dream.

[Joumana Khatib]

I think I'm liberated now, though. I think. I think.

[MJ Franklin]

Well, thank you for coming back to the podcast and readers. Go check that out. And also joining us in the studio for the first time, Lara Thompson. Lara is a fact checker here at the Book Review. Welcome, Lara.

[Laura Thompson]

Hi. I'm so happy to be here.

[MJ Franklin]

Lara, by way of introduction, can you tell us what kind of reader are you?

[Laura Thompson]

My personal tastes tend toward memoir and essays. For our purposes today, I probably actually came to Virginia Woolf originally through A Room of One's Own. Her essay that spoke to me as a 18 year old wannabe writer coming off of a women's studies course.

[MJ Franklin]

Lara, also a little birdie, once told me that you have an unhinged Virginia Woolf connection. You are the birdie. You're the one who told me this. But can you what that connection is?

[Joumana Khatib]

I've been dying to hear this for weeks. Cause MJ refused for her to say it until we were live. So I just. I'm waiting with bated breath here.

[Laura Thompson]

After A Room of One's Own. I found my room of One's own by studying abroad in England. I know this is so brave of me to come out as a study abroad kid, as an adult now.

[Joumana Khatib]

Thank you for your courage.

[Laura Thompson]

And so I was taking a modern British literature course with a Virginia Woolf scholar and we went on a field trip, an adult field trip, Monk's house. And the thing that I remember the most about that trip is that he took us to the River Ouse where Virginia Woolf killed herself to tell me that I got a D on my first paper.

[MJ Franklin]

That is wild. There has to be a better place to be like, listen, you're not doing.

[Joumana Khatib]

Wow.

[Laura Thompson]

To be clear, it was not like just me. This was not exactly like an intervention come to Jesus moment. It was me and three or four classmates had all done very poorly. And I will say that I did just reread the paper. I went and I dug it out and I was like, oh, wow. Okay.

[MJ Franklin]

I promise this will be less intimidating and hopefully less unhinged, but just as lively. Xumana, do you have an unhinged Virginia Woolf connection?

[Joumana Khatib]

I have an embarrassing Virginia Woolf connection, which is that I first read Mrs. Dalloway when I was also in college. And I then read it every summer for four summers because I was working at my college and as like a counselor at a creative writing camp. And we had nothing to do with our charges were in class. So my friends and I would choose a day in June to be Dala Day.

[MJ Franklin]

I love this.

[Joumana Khatib]

And we would all read it in one day. And it was very. So that was my exposure therapy.

[MJ Franklin]

This is incredible. I didn't know this either.

[Laura Thompson]

Happy Dala Days.

[MJ Franklin]

Happy Dala Day, everybody.

[Joumana Khatib]

Listening to the Blitzen podcast. I hope you have a wonderful Dala Day. I cannot believe I've said that on a hot mic. It just screams gifted kid energy, which I hate.

[Laura Thompson]

All deserve swirlies after this.

[Joumana Khatib]

I know. If anybody wants to give me a wedgie like you, just let me know. I totally get it.

[MJ Franklin]

That, folks, is our lineup. But before we dive into the conversation proper, I want to share my typical admin notes up top. First, at the end of the episode, we will reveal our July book club book, so stay with us until the end to find out what we're reading next. And second, there will be spoilers in this conversation in so much as you can even possibly spoil a 100-year-old book where nothing really happens except you're in the mind of one woman, as she thinks. But there will be spoilers. So if you want to go into this book fresh, pause this episode, go read the book, then come back to us. Or if you've already read the book and or don't care about spoilers, let's dive in, let's talk about the book. And to get us started, can someone give us a brief elevator pitch? Synopsis what is Mrs. Dalloway about?

[Joumana Khatib]

I will take this one. I got the easiest synopsis of all time because this is a novel that follows Clarissa Dalloway over one day in London in the twenties as she is getting ready for a party. That is true. What is also true about this book is that it's incredibly discursive and the real action happens primarily in her own mind, the consciousness of the people around her, some of whom she never actually directly meets. But Virginia Woolf has this amazing ability to pass the baton from consciousness to consciousness between characters in a way that's quite seamless and I find very moving. What can I tell you? So that's the important thing to know and the real if there is a climax to this book, it is the culmination of Mrs. Dalloway's party.

[MJ Franklin]

It's a day preparing for a party.

[Laura Thompson]

Yeah.

[Joumana Khatib]

Who among us?

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah, exactly.

[Joumana Khatib]

I actually have spent at least half an hour, like mending something before I have people over to my house. It wasn't green silk, but I was like. Cause when I was rereading it this time, it's been at least 10 years since I've last read Mrs. Dalloway. And I was like, oh yeah, wow. Wow. I have a lot more in common with this 51 year old woman than I thought. Also, just the refrain of how old she is or elderly is crazy.

[MJ Franklin]

We are gonna dig in because that was something I was thinking about too. Time and age and all of that stuff. I just want to do a temperature check now that we've gotten this, I just want to know, broadly speaking, what are your top level thoughts about Mrs. Dalloway? Love it. Hate it. I feel like, given the stories that we've all just shared, we can probably say we all love it. But I'm just curious to know more. I'm going to start with you, Jomana.

[Joumana Khatib]

I still love the book and I think what I will tell you is that after finishing this most recent rereading, what I really appreciated about the book was how tactile and how physical Virginia Woolf makes feelings. She'll describe how the shutters closed over a character's mind or something like that. And I think I admired the ability to intellectualize those kinds of emotions so much. And when I was younger, 19, 20, whatever, I was just a more labile person. And I think that my experience of emotion was different. I moved from emotional state to emotional state a lot more readily than I do now, being the centered and totally well grounded 33 year old that I am. And I think I just have such a different perspective on how Virginia Woolf translates these experiences into words. I still love that image where Peter, who's a former love interest of hers, bursts into her house unannounced. He's just returned from five years in India. It's an emotional scene and they talk about how there's this beautiful image of two people sitting on a balcony together, gazing at the moon. And I was rereading that this weekend and I thought, this is just. This is so lovely. And now that I've had more relationships, I know what this is and I have a lot more respect for that.

[MJ Franklin]

I actually love that scene too. Joumana and I have it annotated in my copy of the book with just what a beautiful metaphor and the quote is. Of course, I did, thought Peter. It almost broke my heart too, he thought, and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly, beautiful with light from the sunken day. Talk about a description of a heartbreak, right? I just. It's so beautiful. I loved it. What about you, Lara? How did you feel?

[Laura Thompson]

I love this book. I've read it several times over the years and I always uncover something new every time. It always lends itself to new readings, which I think is really special. You essentially try on different characters and at whatever point in your life you're reading this, you relate to someone else more than you had previously. And even minor characters start to jump out and come alive and you inhabit them.

[MJ Franklin]

So for this reading, for this time around, for this book club, what stood out to you? Who was your anchor? Tell us more.

[Laura Thompson]

Ooh, who was I this time around? I. I struggled with that A little bit. I remember the first time I read it, I very much felt like Septimus. Septimus Warren Smith is this parallel to Clarissa Dalloway. They never actually meet. They are from entirely different life circumstances and they are having very different days. They only pass each other in the street. That is the extent of their interaction. And he is a recent World War I veteran. He's suffering from shell shock or PTSD and he is on his way to see a specialist to hopefully get him the care he needs. It doesn't work and he kills himself shortly before Clarissa's party.

[MJ Franklin]

But what is it about Septimus? You said the first time that's what you were feeling. Yeah, broadly speaking. Tell us why he was your anchor then and who is your anchor now?

[Laura Thompson]

Because I guess then what is counterintuitive about the suicidal character is that he doesn't actually have that many backwards looking memories. Aside from the very recent war, he is a much more forward looking character than basically anyone else in the novel. Which when you're 19 years old, it's him and Elizabeth are the only two characters that have a forward looking perspective.

[Joumana Khatib]

Elizabeth is Mrs. Dalloway's daughter, correct?

[Laura Thompson]

Yes. But she was happy and I was not. So now I don't know, maybe Lucrezia, who is Septimus Warren Smith's wife. Because I will not concede that I am Clarissa Dalloway. I am too proud for that. Lucrezia has the same sort of not matronly, but she is more self aware of the people around her and is reacting in real time to the circumstances around her. And she is frustrated and she is homesick and again, not a happy character. But she's also still grounded and hopeful for a future. I feel like she's one of the more like moderating characters in the book.

[Joumana Khatib]

Mj, I think also our readers had a lot of thoughts about this book too.

[MJ Franklin]

They did. We've been talking about this book online. We have an article up on the New York Times website, Headline book club read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf with the Book Review. Readers are sharing their thoughts. It's been delightful, like hearing just what people think about this book. And I have a few comments I want to read. Celine from Dallas, Texas writes what surprised me most was how real and familiar the characters felt even a hundred years later. Life looks very different now. People, not so much. I was most drawn to the theme of love's many forms. The excitement of Sally and Clarissa, Peter's longing, the moments of understanding between Septimus and Lucrecia. Each relationship made Me sad at some point, but was no less beautiful for it. Juliet from Seattle writes, one of the things that struck me about Mrs. Dalloway when I first read it at the age of 20 or 21 was how unusual it was for a novel to center on the consciousness of an elderly woman. That was what Mrs. Dalloway seemed to me at the time, frail enough to need to lie down in the middle of the day with an almost grown up daughter and a life full of memories. Now I realize at 48, I must be older than Mrs. Dalloway, and she doesn't seem quite as elderly as she once did. Fiction about middle aged women has become much more common, even in just the last two decades. Woolf's novel is a pioneer, though without Mrs. Dalloway, that more recent fiction might not exist.

[Joumana Khatib]

I'm loving the idea of somebody handing Clarissa Dalloway a copy of All Fours.

[MJ Franklin]

Can you imagine?

[Joumana Khatib]

Just let that sink in. Yeah, someone write that.

[MJ Franklin]

Fanfic at 100 years. This is in the public domain now, right? Someone write it, please.

[Joumana Khatib]

Yeah, go track her down in a motel. She's living there.

[MJ Franklin]

And one last comment. Someone who goes by Cookin from New York writes, when I was in my 20s, I was struck by the setting and time and the ripple effects of World War I. Now in my older years, I tune into the sense of life's missed opportunities so many of the characters live with. I love this novel. So those are just a few of the thoughts from our readers. And then I just want to share my thoughts too, which is, I'm a huge fan of Virginia Woolf and her book to the Lighthouse is one of my favorite all time books. And I think that's because of how I read it. That book I read in the first English class I took in the first semester of my first year of college. And so it is synonymous to me as this like, unlocking of literature and stepping into adulthood and reading in this new way. And it taught me not just to look at a book, but how to feel a book. And I think it's just so beautiful. And I love Mrs. Dalloway for those exact same reasons. The word that comes to mind for me is just full. Look how full life can be. I feel like this novel shows and the tedium of the day is also freed with so much emotion and despair and hope and all of these just like interesting things. And it was written 100 years ago, but it feels so contemporary to me. And I just kept thinking, this is a novel about a woman doing errands as she Prepares for a party. But while she's doing that, she can't stop thinking about death and her exes. And that is Brat Summer. That is Party for your by Charlie Dress.

[Laura Thompson]

And a green dress.

[MJ Franklin]

Yes, exactly.

[Laura Thompson]

It doesn't say what shade of cream, does it?

[MJ Franklin]

No, it's Brad Green.

[Joumana Khatib]

Brad Greene. You heard it here first. It feels Clarissa Jalloway is Brad.

[MJ Franklin]

I love it so much. It feels both challenging in a good way, but it feels fresh and contemporary. And yet it paved the way for so much. I'm obsessed with this novel.

[Laura Thompson]

Can I also just say how much it speaks to how accurate Virginia Woolf's portrayal of human thought processes is that we are all reading this book and immediately thinking back to our younger years when we were reading it, which is exactly what Peter and Clarissa and this entire cast of characters spends an entire day doing.

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah. Just reflecting and thinking and reflecting. And I think it was. There's an essay by E.M. forster, who wrote about Virginia Woolf, and he says in that essay, like a lot of writers can capture what a character thinks of, but no writer captures the process of thinking like Virginia Woolf.

[Joumana Khatib]

Mj, I'm so glad you mentioned that essay by Forster. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that, being the resident Foerster head of the Book Review, I hadn't read that essay. Even though Forster and Virginia Woolf were buddies, they were in the Bloomsbury Group together. And there's a wonderful little soundbite from Mr. Foerster about what it is that he appreciates about Virginia, which is that she gave acute pleasure in new ways and pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness. It's just so poignant, especially when you take into consideration everything we know about how Virginia Woolf's life ended up and how hard she struggled, how much she worked. And I think the other thing, it's impossible. I don't want this to sound macabre. I legitimately don't mean this as a macabre comment. But my understanding is that her work was really her life ballast. When she wasn't working, she suffered. And like these books that, as you said, MJ, like Mrs. Dalloway, I think pretty much all of her fiction really is full of life and life processes and emotion and all of that. And I think part of the reason she's able to do that is because she herself made contact with so much suffering and really had suffered so much on her own.

[MJ Franklin]

So those are our general top level thoughts. We're going to dive in some more, but first I think we should take a Quick break.

[N/A]

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[MJ Franklin]

And we're back. This is the Book Review podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm chatting about Mrs. Dallowbay with Zumana Khatib and Lara Thompson. Before the break, we were talking about our general thoughts about the book. And now I want to dive in with some more specifics. And actually, for this segment, I call it Free Swim. I'm gonna follow your lead. Take it away. I'm gonna start with you, Lara.

[Laura Thompson]

I think one thing that's really important to understanding, I guess the significance of Mrs. Dalloway is understanding how revolutionary her approach to character was at the time. So much of Mrs. Dalloway isn't about the plot. It is a novel of abstention. And it's more about what could have been than what actually is happening. So you only get at that by delving into these various characters consciousnesses. And that really hadn't been done much before Mrs. Dalloway. It was a massive break from this earlier realism that was happening in English literature at the time. And so to acknowledge essentially that what is more important than the happenings of the world around you is what is going on in a character's inner life. It wasn't unheard of at the time, but it was not popular. Hogarth Press, which was Virginia Woolf's press, was publishing early translations of Freud. This was all overlapping with this understanding of psychoanalysis and the mind, which also.

[MJ Franklin]

Helped pave the way for modernism. Right. Isn't literary modernism a response to the war, like World War I, the Great War, and how just like life no longer was coherent and fractured thoughts? How do you capture that in this world that has been torn aside?

[Laura Thompson]

Right.

[MJ Franklin]

And one of the things that I was really thinking about while reading too, in addition to characterization and interiority, is just how I kept in my mind comparing it to formal experiments today, experiments dealing with how do you capture the way the Internet has impacted our thought processes in the novel? Or how do you capture this, like, post truth world we seem to be living in? And I found all of the Seeds of that here in this book, in Mrs. Dalloway.

[Joumana Khatib]

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. And what I was really struck by too, was how much more lenient I was in this reading. Because I remember when I was 19, 20, I was like, I understand that this is a revolutionary piece of literature. I understand the role it's playing in ushering in a new movement. I appreciate that it's hitting similar notes as Ulysses, but I don't have to read Ulysses. I appreciate all that. But then I also remember being quite rankled, and I blame this on being a 19 year old who still has her lobes filling out. We're meeting this character in a relational context, like Mrs. Dalloway. The book's not called Clarissa, it's called Mrs. Dalloway. It's a woman buying flowers for a party. Like, how retrograde. And this time around, I actually felt the weight and I felt the boundary pushing that Virginia Woolf was doing in a much more nuanced way than I did 10 years ago. And part of this is we don't meet Richard, her husband, for hundreds of pages into the book, at least my book, there's all this subtlety to it that I think when you remember the time period it was written in and you remember its lack of antecedents, it was. I have a. I had a lot more respect for how it came together too.

[MJ Franklin]

One of the things that you said, though, that you mentioned, it's not caught Clarissa, it's caught Mrs. Dalloway. And the idea of Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, having so many selves held within this one person. Do you notice that in specific passages, the way they referred to her would switch in the same paragraph. It'd be like Mrs. Dalloway said, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then Clarissa said. There's the sense of, again, that, like that fracturing that it felt so interesting and formally daring and emotionally rich.

[Laura Thompson]

I think especially her opining on Ms. Kilman and that sort of. That version of Clarissa and Mrs. Dalloway.

[MJ Franklin]

Tell us more about that.

[Laura Thompson]

Is really, really fascinating because she is so frustrated with Ms. Kilman, who is Elizabeth's tutor. And Ms. Kilman is this prickly, 40 something, I believe, German history tutor, German comma history tutor. And Elizabeth is just infatuated with her. And the thing is that Clarissa or Mrs. Dalloway can see the echoes of Clarissa and Sally Seton, who is her childhood friend, this daring, tomboyish, swashbuckling young woman who she fell in love with as a teenager. And she sees this sort of echo between. Between Elizabeth and Mrs. Kilman and the young, spunky part, the Clarissa part is like, you couldn't find a bigger baddie. Come on, she's not that hot. And then the matronly, motherly Mrs. Dalloway is just. I don't understand the youth these days. I can't relate to this young woman. I'm ambivalent about being a mother at all. Like, why am I doing this?

[MJ Franklin]

A word that you said, echoes is so interesting to me because this novel is so deep in all of these isolated people's heads. Right. We're in Peter's head as he's walking around. He's in Regent's park by himself. He is. You're in Mrs. Dalloway's head when she's by herself looking for flowers. And yet there are all of these echoes within that isolation, which I feel like there's something rich and I keep saying that word, but there's something fascinating about that to me. And one of the kind, which I think is groundbreaking, is the idea. You alluded to it earlier, is the idea of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus being echoes and foils for each other. Here is a society woman who is also in her thinking, too. She's like, oh, I'm thinking about death in the same way. The same as this soldier. That's incredible to me. And it's done so subtly.

[Joumana Khatib]

Right.

[Laura Thompson]

In the original version of this novel, there was no Septimus Warren Smith. It was just Clarissa Dalloway and she kills herself at the party.

[MJ Franklin]

I did not. Gooped, gobsmacked surprise.

[Laura Thompson]

Fact checked.

[MJ Franklin]

Wow.

[Joumana Khatib]

So who convinced her to redo that? Do we know that?

[Laura Thompson]

I don't know what was the inspiration for separating out these characters, but I do understand that, like, criticism at the time was that these two characters seemed like just totally divergent storylines. And critics were like, girl, what, this guy?

[Joumana Khatib]

Yeah, he's.

[Laura Thompson]

But if you do pick up on these echoes, both of them are described as bird like in their appearance. Both of them are big Shakespeare stans.

[Joumana Khatib]

Yeah.

[Laura Thompson]

And they're quoting from the same lines of Shakespeare. It's incredibly subtle. But they are. A foil is a polar opposite. They are exactly the same. They are the same person in these sort of, like, alternate realities.

[Joumana Khatib]

It's to your point, mj, about what modernism was really trying to capture, which is the fracturing and breakdown of society to the point that somebody who had served and had actually acted quite valiantly during the war and witnessed death up close. And this woman who is. If you want to go with the idea that Clarissa is a stand in for Virginia Woolf, she was quite, quite pacifistic, extremely anti imperial, anti conflict. She had very, very strong political opinions. And yet she was still as affected by the breakdown of society and the profundity of the war and the mass atrocity that it deposited them at the.

[MJ Franklin]

Same place, which are such huge, lofty ideas. And to get at that in this novel, I feel like that's, for me, and this is one of the reasons why I love Mrs. Dalloway, is that this is what novels are for.

[Joumana Khatib]

Yeah.

[MJ Franklin]

Can you imagine sitting in a lecture of just that point, but having a novel like Mrs. Dalloway to help us feel that, I think is remarkable?

[Joumana Khatib]

I'm interested because I saw so many readers, and I understand this. You said that they found getting into the rhythm of Mrs. Dalloway hard. They found that it was almost like reading through a screen. And I know what that's like to just feel like I cannot get my hands around this. Do either of you have suggestions for what the way to help yourself get in the mindset is if you're struggling?

[MJ Franklin]

I have so many tips I don't want to steamroll, but I found myself taking so many different strategies. Okay, so here are a few of mine. First is I would listen. I would read a bit and then listen to the audiobook. And I wouldn't do one or the other. I did them both. I sat down and I had them both together. And reading the text was my primary mode. But then I was like, I just want to. I want to feel the rhythm. I want to hear it. So then I would listen. But even better than listening, I found reading it out loud myself was the key to getting into this text. And I think that's because Virginia Woolf's writing is so rhythmic and intentional, and the cadence and the speed of certain passages and the length of certain vowels, I found myself being able to physically feel what the characters were feeling as I was reading out loud. So in addition to reading out loud, making me slow down, I felt like I was able to engage with the text in a different way, just having it physically in my body, coming out of my lungs. So that was one. I also. I picked this up from George Saunders, wrote that book a few years ago, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain or something like that. I'm sorry, I'm butchering the title, but he has a practice that he does, he talks about in the first essay, which is he just stops and checks in with himself a lot. So you'll read a passage and then just say, okay, so what is new. What have I learned? How does this reset the table? And I found myself doing that a lot, especially in some of the strange elliptical passages where it's just thought and emotion and you're like, okay, what is this character thinking about? And just that process of stopping and saying it out loud to myself was really helpful. And I had this like weird fractured reading experience. Cause I was like reading the text and then going to listen to it and then reading it out loud and then having talking to myself. But I found that exciting and energizing. And again, it was a reminder of why I love books. I don't know. So those were my tips.

[Laura Thompson]

So I have two sort of divergent strategies, just depending on what you're looking for. So there's a very context heavy version of this, which is simply understanding all of the references. I mean, this was written for a contemporary audience. And so just just by not having lived in London in the 20s, I felt like I was missing a lot of references. And so there are really wonderful annotated versions of the book out there. I have Merv Emre's, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

[MJ Franklin]

It's beautiful.

[Laura Thompson]

It's gorgeous. It's full of these beautiful images, paintings. There's maps. Like, I can literally see Clarissa and Septimus passing on the street.

[Joumana Khatib]

Amazing.

[Laura Thompson]

It's so incredibly helpful. It's where I learned all of my fun facts. But I also found that you lose the tempo and you can lose the emotion of the book that way. And so I had almost like a mindfulness sort of approach to reading this, where the way that these sentences spin out and characters shift so rapidly from observing the world around them to going back into their nostalgic memories, to shifting to a whole new character. I actually tried to just let my own mind wander with that. And I was very okay with just having a slow reading experience. Like, this was the one time that I can recall reading something and being okay just daydreaming off. And if that meant I had to go back and reread a paragraph, it was actually, I felt like even more enriching because I had so fully embodied one of these characters that I was like, what do I think about the Strand?

[MJ Franklin]

I love that. Yeah. You're experiencing what the characters are doing.

[Laura Thompson]

Yeah, I feel.

[MJ Franklin]

In their own way.

[Laura Thompson]

Yeah, I feel it goes to what I would hope at least is the correct quote unquote, or the author's intended way of reading a text is that you are following the character's lead. And these characters are a little spacey. Yeah.

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah. What about you, Jomana? Did you have any tips, tricks, anything that helped you?

[Joumana Khatib]

Yeah, I mean, total submission. I'm always saying that, but I just got to the point where I was like, okay, you know what? There are gonna be things that pass me by. And that is fine, because for whatever reason, I mean, I've said this now 18 times, and I'm sorry, but on this last rereading, I was really interested in the relationship between my intellectual and emotional reactions, and I wanted to let my emotions guide how I was reading. And so I knew there were gonna be things that would just pass me by, and I decided to make my peace with that. Cause emotions are confusing. Thoughts are also confusing. It's okay. And I felt that it was a very absorbing and intimate reading experience, and I was fine with that.

[MJ Franklin]

So, readers, if you are stuck on this book, a lot of strategies.

[Laura Thompson]

I think it's vibes. Go for vibes.

[MJ Franklin]

I love that we are running out of time, unfortunately, and I feel like we could talk about this book forever. There are courses on this book. We have an hour. There are whole courses. We've barely scratched the surface. But I want to be conscious of time. Before we go, though, are there any last things you want to mention about this book? Characters you love that you want to shout out? Lines, scenes, et cetera?

[Joumana Khatib]

If I never meet another Peter Walsh in my life, I will be happy.

[Laura Thompson]

I was going to say that's the only brain I didn't really like Being in that much was like, get me out of here.

[Joumana Khatib]

Please, mom, come pick me up.

[MJ Franklin]

I'm scared. I have a quote speaking of, like, a mind that I want to be a part of. There's a quote of, I think Clarissa or someone describing Richard Dalloway, which I.

[Joumana Khatib]

Just thought they savaged him. They made him seem like he was like Buster Bluth. And I was like, he's okay.

[MJ Franklin]

The quote that I have is the description they call him. They mentioned Richard Dalloway with his quote, adorable, divine simplicity. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if someone said that about you? Devastating and still beautifully said. Beautifully said.

[Joumana Khatib]

I have said that about my friends. Toddlers.

[Laura Thompson]

That's even mean for a toddler.

[Joumana Khatib]

I know. And then I felt bad.

[Laura Thompson]

I'm just kidding.

[MJ Franklin]

Like, they're trying.

[Laura Thompson]

They're learning. Jesus.

[MJ Franklin]

Poor Richard. Poor Richard. But anyway, before we go, I want to, as always, wrap up with some recommendations. And I'm gonna keep leave this recommendation segment very broad. I just want to know, what would you recommend readers pick up after Mrs. Dalloway? This could be Anything from another book set in the course of just one day. It could be an essay that unlocks something about Mrs. Dalloway for you. It can be a book with a lot of interiority. I will follow your lead. Just give me some book recommendations which readers pick up next. I'm going to start with you, Lara.

[Laura Thompson]

Great. So this is for the readers who enjoyed Mrs. Talloway. To be clear, I. And I actually think I'm probably going to reread this next myself because I was thinking about this. The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lyspector.

[MJ Franklin]

I don't know this book.

[Laura Thompson]

So imagine, as I said, Clarissa and Septimus are these sort of parallel characters. Imagine that you smash them together into one woman. One upper class Brazilian woman losing her ever loving mind.

[MJ Franklin]

I'm in. I'm in. Say, say less.

[Laura Thompson]

She's sitting at breakfast recounting the events of the previous day, which are similar. That she went to go clean out a maid's room and squashed a cockroach. That is the plot, that is the action of the book. But it is told in this stream of consciousness style and it lends itself to this interiority and these reflections on past loves and the inescapable inevitability of death and the connectedness of all beings. It's basically more like mystic sort of 60s version of Mrs. Temp Jomana.

[MJ Franklin]

You're nodding along. Have you read this too?

[Joumana Khatib]

Yes, yes, yes. And I love Lispector a little too much. And I think Laura, you're forgetting to mention that this has one of the most indelible cockroach images in all of Latin American literature. So if that doesn't sell you, I don't know what will.

[MJ Franklin]

Beautiful. What about you, Joanna? Do you have a recommendation?

[Joumana Khatib]

That's hard to follow up my own delusions. But I've been thinking about the Irish writer. I'm your McBride. She's written a Girl is a Half Formed Thing. That was the first book of hers I'd read. She's totally broken down language and reshaped it in her own demotic. It's unbelievable. And then the lesser bohemians I think is a little more accessible if you are somebody who maybe wants like more characterization and punctuation, but she for some reason I believe that she belongs on the same continuum as Virginia Woolf in terms of how she experiments with form, how she develops consciousness. I think they're both very economical writers. And MJ, you use the word rich a lot talking about Mrs. Dalloway and every time I read Emir. I'm struck by just, like, how rich her stories are. She has a new book coming out in August. I'm very excited about it.

[MJ Franklin]

Oh, interesting. I was gonna ask where should we start? But should we start with new books? Should we start with.

[Joumana Khatib]

I would start with the Lesser Bohemians. Cause I. I think the new one, I think it's already out in the uk. But the one that's coming out in August is a sequel. And A Girl is a Half Formed Thing is something that you really graduate to if you like the Lesser Bohemians. That's what I'm gonna say.

[MJ Franklin]

There we go. There we go. Thank you. Thank you.

[Joumana Khatib]

How about you, mj?

[MJ Franklin]

Yes. I have a few recommendations. First, I just wanna do like, a little Virginia Woolf reading guide. After eat Mrs. Dalloway. Go read to the Lighthouse again, my personal favorite, Mrs. Ramsey.

[Laura Thompson]

Ugh.

[MJ Franklin]

And the dinner scene. The dinner scene in that book. I could talk about that. Another podcast. Then I say, it's Pride Month. You gotta read Orlando.

[Joumana Khatib]

I was.

[Laura Thompson]

That's my personal. That's my personal Virginia Canon.

[MJ Franklin]

Just gender games all around. And it's a different side of Virginia Woolf, too. It's goofy and silly and playful. It's really refreshing to see it's a different side of her, which I love. Then go read. Lara mentioned it before. A Room of one's own in Mrs. Dalloway. I feel like there are mentions of Clarissa thinking, oh, the confines of marriage, or certainly with Sally Seton, like, being tamped down by marriage. And this is like a classic feminist lecture about women in fiction and independence and autonomy. And it's lively and feels like it could have been written today. And then about how rich these characters are. Go read Mr. Brown and Mrs. Bennet. Am I saying that title right? Yeah. No. Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown, which is Virginia Woolf writing about how to construct good characters. And she has such a vivid and robust mind in nonfiction as well. So that's my Virginia Woolf reading guide. Are there any things that anyone else would mention? I feel like I basically go read all everything.

[Laura Thompson]

I don't want to step on your toes if you're going to get to this, but there is also Michael Cunningham's the Hours, which is the sort of single most obvious. In fact, I didn't put it as my recommendation because I assumed that someone else would, but it won the Pulitzer in 98, 99, something like that. It is more than just like an homage to Mrs. Dalloway. It is a continuation of Mrs. Dalloway. It Is if you're Having trouble keeping up with the historical references of Mrs. Dalloway. Michael Cunningham is for you. That's a.

[Joumana Khatib]

You know what? That is a really good tip if you're finding. Yes, maybe if you're finding yourself a little alienated by Mrs. Dalloway. Start with the hours.

[MJ Franklin]

And have you seen that beautiful addition of the hours on one side? You flip it over and it's Mrs. Dalloway. So it's all bundled together for you. It's gorgeous.

[Laura Thompson]

Dalloway Mobius book.

[Joumana Khatib]

Mobius.

[MJ Franklin]

I have mentioned this so often. I feel like on every single podcast recommendation segment or book club recommendation segment by taking Guess Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle. The kinetic consciousness in that book, I think, is written in the direct lineage of Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway. Again, you're. You start off, you're in the mind of one boxer in the ring, then you're in her past. You're back in the ring, she's throwing a punch. Then all of a sudden, as that punch is going, you move over to the other fighter. You're in that other fighter's past, Then you float to the top of the stadium. The way that consciousness moves in that book. Go read it. And then the other book that I want to recommend is Tilt by Emma Paty, which is. This is very different from Mrs. Dalloway. This is about a woman surviving a climate disaster. She is, like, nine months pregnant. She goes to Ikea, there is a giant earthquake, she lives in the Pacific Northwest, and the book is about just her day trying to get home as the city is crumbling in the wake of this earthquake. But then there are a lot of flashbacks to her past, and she's thinking about her relationship with her husband, and that is also crumbling in a very different way than the literal infrastructure of her city. But it's set in the course of one day. And so. Tilt by Emma Paty.

[Laura Thompson]

I agree with that. I think the interiority is similar. It's just. It's Mrs. Dalloway's lovely little walk to get flowers. Because it is Emma. Patty is writing about a short, easy trip to pick up an IKEA crib. Right.

[Joumana Khatib]

If anything can be easy on IKEA. But.

[Laura Thompson]

So, yeah, it is if Mrs. Dalloway's party went horribly wrong.

[MJ Franklin]

Yes, exactly. On that note, I think that's all the time that we have for today. Joumana, Lara, thank you so much. This was super fun. And also thank you to everyone who read with us online. Again, we have an article up on the New York Times as well website headlined book club read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf with the Book Review. Continue the conversation there. I know there's so much more we can keep digging into. We only have a limited time today, but again, this book is so full of life. So keep talking there. And now, as promised, I wanted to reveal the title of our July Book Club book. In July, the Book Review Book Club is reading the Catch by Yurisa Daily Ward. This is a mind and reality bending thriller about two semi estranged twin sisters who whose worlds are shaken when one day their mother, who they believed had disappeared 30 years earlier, suddenly reappears. But the twist is that she doesn't look like she's aged a day. What's real, what's not? Does that even matter? Read with us to find out. We'll be discussing the book on the podcast that airs on July 25th. And we're also talking about the book online too. We have an article up right now. I bet you can guess the framework it is. Book Club Read the Catch by Yrisa Daily Award with the Book Review. Talk with us. Talk with other readers about the book there. We hope you'll join us. And until then, happy reading.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That was M.J. franklin, Joumana Khatib and Laura Thompson discussing Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. I'm Gilbert Cruz, Editor of the New York Times Book Review. Thanks for listening.

[MJ Franklin]

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