I finally read Mrs. Dalloway straight through. I closed the book and pulled a pillow over my face. Really, I started to cry.

And now I have to reread The Hours, of course, even rent the movie when it’s out on DVD. (I wonder if I can even find the book without Meryl Streep on the cover. Last time around I had taken it out from the library.) And I’ve been looking for other things to read — literary criticism, anything — but while a Google search turns up many opportunities to buy the book, there isn’t a lot of scholarship to be found. Times like these I wish I were in school again, at a round table discussion. “Writing Women’s Stories” was a class I’d taken at Sarah Lawrence — why hadn’t we read this then?