the five minute mrs. dalloway

Just recently discovered a hilarious book called The Five Minute Illiad and Other Instant Classics. Actually, the "others" were just so-so - the Illiad was riotous. Inspired, I've decided to condense my favourite book, Mrs. Dalloway, into something Virginia Woolf may well have crafted if she had lived today.

Mrs. Dalloway said she'd buy the flowers herself. Because, you know, there was this party going on that night and she was the perfect hostess after all, and what a lark, what a plunge - life; London; this moment in June. Oh, and something about cabbages - but that was part of a memory with this guy named Peter Walsh who she was never in love with (it was always Sally Seton, right? Whom she kissed once and never really got over).

So she heads out to get these flowers, thinking stuff about being the perfect hostess and how wonderful life is and yadda, yadda, yadda but we all know she's really trapped in this, like, gender stereotype and she'd rather be chillin' with Sally than waiting on Richard (her husband) hand and foot, not to mention her spoiled brat daughter, Elizabeth.

Of course, she takes the long route to the flower shop, through Hyde Park (or was it St. James?), past the flowers, the Serpentine where she remembers throwing a shilling in, and she runs into this totally wacked out guy named Septimus Warren Smith and his wife, Lucrezia. He's totally burnt out from the war, and all, "It was awful, awful, awful," and she (is wife), is, like, "Why should I suffer?" so in the end he jumps out the window and kills himself, even though the weather is nice and there are flowers everywhere and they are in London, but he can't get into that.

So Mrs. Dalloway - Clarissa - basically walks around London a lot, living in the past, remembering Peter Walsh and Sally Seton and the great times they used to have, and how at first she called her husband (Richard) Wickham when she just met him and wasn't THAT a crazy thing to do? "My name is Dalloway," he had responded, and then everyone started calling him "My name is Dalloway." Because that's just the Brits.

So, she gets home and you'll never guess who pops in, all the way from India (where he traveled years before to get over being rejected by Clarissa), but Peter Walsh. So they catch up, and then the party happens and Clarissa is all freaked out about whether or not everyone's going to have fun and basically having fun means she's a valuable asset to the world and not having fun means she should follow Septimus Warren Smith out the window.

Fortunately, she doesn't, because people actually find things to talk about, like whether the entree was really done at home, how young ladies didn't used to need to wear rouge and how Lord Lexham's wife had caught a cold at the Buckingham Palace garden party. Although there is a moment of consideration, and is it any wonder? Then Sally shows up and she's all fat now after having I can't remember how many kids, so I'm guessing THAT attraction is over.

And then it ends with Peter talking to Sally, before she decides to go talk to Richard instead.

"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?

It is Clarissa, he said.

For there she was.

Hmmm. . . yeah, not really the same when transcribed this way, I'm afraid. Virginia would spin in her grave. Think I'll just recommend the unabridged book, then. It's a much better read.