In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell shock and is on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax.

Over the course of a single day, Woolf achieves an uncanny simulacrum of consciousness, bringing past, present, and future together, and recording, minute by minute, the feel of life itself.