First published 1998
Virginia Woolf sits at her writing desk in 1920s England, battling the darkness in her mind while crafting what will become her final work. Decades later in 1950s Los Angeles, Laura Brown abandons her kitchen and sleeping family to read Woolf's words, seeking escape from the suffocating routine of suburban motherhood. In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan moves through her day planning an elaborate party for Richard, a dying poet who once called her Mrs. Dalloway. Richard's illness forces Clarissa to examine her own choices about love and commitment. As Virginia writes, Laura reads, and Clarissa prepares, their separate stories reveal how women across time struggle with the same questions about duty, desire, and the courage to live authentically. Each woman faces a single day that will define her future, connected by Woolf's novel and their shared search for meaning in ordinary moments.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, biographical-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Los Angeles, New York, Suburban New York
Period: 1920s, 1950s, 1990s
Picador, 1998
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness