• The 36 Best One-Star Amazon Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway

    "Let us listen to an old farty woman stream her consciousness to us."

    Feature image courtesy of Yelena Bryksenkova

    Ninety-four years ago today, Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway, a landmark work of modernist literature and, incidentally, my father’s favorite novel. (Mine is To the Lighthouse; yes, we are a staunch Woolf family.) It was well received at the time, and has been read, taught, and cherished by readers ever since.

    But not all readers, of course. So for the book’s birthday, I went to find its dissenters, in the place where literary dissenters live and thrive: the Amazon reviews. (See also: the best one-star reviews of The Great Gatsby, The Cather in the Rye, and Wuthering Heights.) Many of these commenters found Mrs. Dalloway to be boring. Very boring. Murderously boring. Masochistically boring. Someone said it was “as bad as Faulkner,” a sentiment with which these people might or might not agree. Semi-colons are an issue. Farts are a theme. That’s all I’ll say about that.

    However: into (nearly) every one-star Amazon reviews section, a hero is born. A defender, who seeks only to defend the book in question against its nasty, illiterate reviewers. For Mrs. Dalloway, that hero is “deez.” (As in, I suppose, “deez nuts.”) Our friend deez knows what’s up. Mrs. Dalloway is only bad, deez might say, if you yourself are bad. Or at least lazy.

    Happy Birthday, Mrs. Dalloway.

    [Click to enlarge.]


    Emily Temple
    Emily Temple
    Emily Temple is the managing editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins in June 2020. You can buy it here.
    https://www.emilytemple.net/





    Read More

    Gabriel García Márquez on
    Life in 1950s Paris

     I came to Paris for the first time one freezing December night in 1955. I arrived by train from Rome to a station decked...

    We Need Your Help:

    Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member

    Lit Hub has always brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for your contribution, you'll get an ad-free site experience, editors' picks, and our Joan Didion tote bag. Most importantly, you'll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving.