Direct and vivid in her account of Clarissa Dalloways preparations for a party, Virginia Woolf explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a womans life.

In Mrs. Dalloway, the novel on which the movie The Hours was based, Virginia Woolf details Clarissa Dalloways preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess, exploring the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a womans life. The novel "contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English, and that alone would be reason enough to read it. It is one of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century" (Michael Cunningham).