Rewriting Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway: homage, sexual identity, and the single-day novel by Cunningham, Lippincott, and Lanchester.(Michael Cunningham, Robin Lippincott and John Lanchester)

CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, June, 2004 by Schiff, James

Although To the Lighthouse is often cited as Virginia Woolf's finest novel, Mrs. Dalloway is the work that in recent years has inspired so much imitation and homage. Since 1998 three novels have appeared that draw from and, in turn, engage in explicit dialogue with Mrs. Dalloway: Michael Cunningham's The Hours (1998), Robin Lippincott's Mr. Dalloway (1999), and John Lanchester's Mr. Phillips (2000).

Surely one of the reasons why Woolf's fourth novel has attracted these authors is that, like Joyce's Ulysses, it takes place over the course of a single day. The single-day novel is appealing because it provides a clear, manageable, and predetermined time frame and structure. In addition, it allows the particular (a single day) to reveal the whole (an entire life)....

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