This is the first of Woolf's novels that I have read. I don't suppose that I would have ever got round to pulling it from the bookshelves if it had not been the selection for June's book club.
It is not a long novel and by no means could you describe it as a yarn. It is novel of themes and of comparisons. The two principal characters are Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. Although the clerk and the socialite wife of an MP are very different individuals yet there are aspects of their lives which are similarly coloured and clouded. Both of them are survivors. Septimus is severely shell shocked and is a survivor of war. His mental illness reflects Woolf's own struggles of the mind which like her fictional character would ultimately result in her taking her own life. Clarissa is a survivor of the influenza pandemic which swept across Europe at the end of the Great War and she too has been left scarred. Clarissa definitely and Septimus probably have experienced incidents of, " the love that dares not speak its name." Yet another example of Woolf's own life being introduced into her writing.
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