Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is one of those novels that I’ve been meaning to read for ages but would usually get passed over in favor of something less intimidating. I dipped in and out of it for the better part of a month and a half, and finally steeled myself to finish off the last sixty pages one evening towards the end of last week. And then when I was done, I thought, ‘that’s it?’

The entirety of Mrs. Dalloway takes place during the course of one day, with the story taking place as the reader follows the various characters around London. The story flows from one character to another as they interact — and I use the word ‘interact’ loosely here, maybe ‘encounter’ is better for some of them — with each other, culminating with Clarissa Dalloway’s party at the end of the evening, where everything all kind of ties together.

I wasn’t an English major, so I can’t begin to understand the complexities and subtleties that are most likely hiding in this work. I’ve never read Ulysses by James Joyce, either, a novel to which Mrs. Dalloway is (apparently) often paralleled, so there goes more that I might be missing. While I did enjoy reading about each of the characters and getting little glimpses of what makes them tick as they communicate with each other, this is, at times, a very tedious book.

At some point in the future, I’ll probably give it another try in hopes of getting more from it, and I also intend to give To the Lighthouse a go. But I can’t say that Mrs. Dalloway will ever make my list of favorites.

This book definitely left me saying “Oh”, and “Wow”, as well. I’m not typically one for war stories, but this one is so powerful and moving that when I was finished — and often between chapters — I just sat and thought. O’Brien’s novel is fiction posing as a memoir, telling the stories of the men in his company as they fought in Vietnam, telling the stories and the truths of war. Just about every chapter is its own story, but they weave together to give a larger glimpse into the lives of the men who battled both the enemies and themselves.

Three-quarters of the way through the novel, O’Brien tells us, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.” (pg. 179) The Things They Carried may not be the truth in the strictest sense of the word. These stories may not have happened exactly as O’Brien put them to paper, but they’re beautifully written, touching, and emotionally true.

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The Things They Carried also has the distinction of being the first book I’ve read this year on the “1,001 Books You Should Read Before You Die” list, based on the first edition of the book of the same name. I’m trying to make a dent in the first edition before tackling the second.