Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are. In this vivid portrait of a single day in a womans life Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the lastminute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors she is flooded with remembrances of the pastthe passionate loves of her carefree youth her practical choice of husband and the approach and retreat of war. And met with the realities of the present Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old. From the introspective Clarissa to the lover who never fully recovered from her rejection to a warravaged stranger in the park the characters and scope of Mrs. Dalloway reshape our sense of ordinary life making it one of the most moving revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century Michael Cunningham. show more