Michael Cunningham has written a beautiful modern version of Virginia Woolf’s classic ’’Mrs. Dalloway, ’’ managing to capture the complexities of the original and add a few of his own.
Clarissa Vaughn begins her day searching for flowers for a party she will throw to celebrate an award her writer friend, Richard, has won. It is Richard who compares Clarissa to the famous literary character ’’Mrs. Dalloway.’’ As Clarissa goes about her day we are taken back in time to meet Virginia Woolf as she begins to write her classic story.
And as we read Virginia’s beginning words another of Cunningham’s characters, Mrs. Brown, picks up the book to read....’’Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.’’ Cunningham weaves the story of three women into one, all suffer from melancholy, and all struggle with an aspect of her day as they each deal with their own hours in circumstantial and age related ways. Mrs. Brown fails at baking a cake, Clarissa fails as a friend, and Virginia wonders how she failed in life but all the while lurks ’’Mrs. Dalloway, ’’ going about her day hoping to extinguish her own emptiness.
Cunningham has managed something quite extraordinary with his re-written modern version of ’’Mrs. Dalloway.’’ In his version the famous character is free to experience her true heart with the freedoms that modern society has provided. Clarissa and Sally have carried their infatuation from the original story into a committed lesbian relationship here. Richard, a tortured and reluctant soul, finds himself a character confronting AIDS and pondering the direction of his life while still seemingly obsessed with Clarissa.
Clarissa’s daughter is again pursued for her youth and vitality by both old and angry lesbians seeking her energy. The party begins the day but in Cunningham’s novel the ending arrives quite differently. Cunningham writes beautifully and captures a whisper of Woolf as he goes along to reveal how ’’Mrs. Dalloway, ’’ may have went about her day had she experienced this age. Cunningham guides us between his three stories always sure to connect them in some seemingly insignificant way that is actually hauntingly real.
While I fully believe Cunningham’s work here can stand on its own I also believe it is enhanced with a familiarity to Virginia Woolf’s original story. As a reader I did not grasp all of the intricacies of Cunningham’s novel until I had read Woolf’s ’’Mrs. Dalloway, ’’ and then re-read Cunningham, only then was I able to understand just where Cunningham’s ideas stemmed from and fully marveled at his talent. But no matter how you read between the lines this novel is well worth the hours spent within its pages.