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Curator Reviews
Mary Gordon
I first read it because it was on sale for a quarter in a bookstore in Penn Station. I thought it was going to be something like the Albee play. I read it on the train to Boston, and I felt that the prose had broken one of my ribs: it was so powerful. I had been a poet until then, not thinking of writing fiction and “Mrs. Dalloway,” let me know you could do in fiction what I wanted to do in poetry.
View Mary Gordon's Top 10 Favorite BooksDamian Barr
It’s June 1923 and Mrs Dalloway is dashing around town making preparations for a party. "Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense … before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed." Virginia Woolf conjures the capital through privileged eyes. While reading listen to Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works by Max Richter whose swooping music features that boom and a rare recording of Woolf’s voice.
View Damian Barr's Top 10 Favorite Books