I didn't dislike this book, but I can't say I particularly enjoyed it either. It's described as a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway and to a degree it kind of is, but it covers so many characters that I wouldn't even consider Mrs. Dalloway to be the main character. It was just a bunch of characters who had thoughts and memories throughout the day. It covered mundane life, but without the cohesive narrative of a single character that I would have preferred.

I think it gives kind of an interesting insight on life at the time. I did actually enjoy learning about what people went through and just what normal life was like. Mrs. Dalloway herself is a wealthy woman, but there's also a soldier who came back from the war with PTSD and a man who works in India and an Italian immigrant. It sounds like it should have been an interesting cast of characters, and they all were individually, but it didn't feel like there was anything that connected the different story threads together. I can see why someone would enjoy those aspects, but I didn't appreciate the execution.

I also quite liked some of the writing. She has incredibly long sentences that took a while to get into, but by the end of the book they flowed really well for me. They were almost circular in nature, going on for so long that they eventually came back to the original idea of the sentence. They left me feeling that while this book wasn't for me, I'd be down to try more of her work in the future.

I think overall the scope of this book was much to wide. I really enjoyed the beginning when I thought it would center around Mrs. Dalloway, and I enjoyed returning to her, but there was just so much else that went on that it felt kind of meaningless. It didn't feel like a novel so much as a collection of shorts.

I felt bored and disinterested through most of this book. Part of that I take the blame for. Usually I prefer reading books in large chunks over short periods of time and this took almost a month (unrelated health reasons mainly), but even then, I never felt like picking this up. I read this with a friend and usually I'm itching to read faster than the pace we set, but this time I was struggling to keep up. It wasn't that I disliked this book. I just didn't care. Reading it felt like a chore with very little reward, apart from some lovely writing and insights into Mrs. Dalloway's character.

Small note, but I also found the change of POV a little annoying. Pronouns were used frequently instead of names, and sometimes because it switched around to so many different people I would have to reread back a few paragraphs or pages to figure out who was speaking. It wasn't a huge deal, but just a constant minor irritation.

Just in general, not the book for me, which is disappointing because I normally adore books that are "a day in the life." I guess I can see why some people like this and I'm not disappointed I read it, but I hope the rest of Woolf's works are better for me.