June 24, 2016

Book Review: The Lady in the Looking Glass by Virginia Woolf

Title:  The Lady in the Looking Glass
Author: Virginia Woolf
Genre: Short Stories, Classics
ISBN: 978-0-14-197124-7
Publisher: Penguin
Source: Kindle Edition
Pages: 96
Rating: 4/5

I am a naïve when it comes to classic reads, I hardly devour this genre. It is due to lack of my interest or else, don’t know but this time I couldn’t resist myself from reading it. 

The Lady in the Looking Glass, I am telling you frankly, It is not easy to get into the writings of Virginia Woolf, at least my experience is like that only, but you can’t stop yourself after reading few lines of her stories, now that’s the magic of Virginia Woolf. It is kind of experimental reading.

People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.

The Lady in the Looking Glass is a collection of five stories, exploring the perspective of women, the way she weaved her stories, first you get distracted from the main theme and at the same time you try to come back to it from a different tangent. It captivates you because she used the moments from everyday life.

I have never read anything like this before, It was like she playing with her characters and their consciousness. My mind started wandering into her depths of seeing things. Narration style of her stories what I liked the most.

I particularly liked “Lady in the looking glass” “Lapin and Lapinova” and “Solid objects”. Poignant human emotions make it read worthy. It seemed to me that I am reading some interesting essays, related to sort of parallel universe. Give it a try!   

About The Author

Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. 


During the interwar period, Woolf  was a significant figure in London society and a member of Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse(1927), and Orlando(1928), and the book length essay A Room of One's Own(1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own id she is to write fiction."