Clarissa Dalloway buys flowers for her party, and the novel follows her consciousness and others' through a single day in London. Woolf developed her stream-of-consciousness technique here, moving between minds with fluid grace, stitching them together with Big Ben's chimes. Septimus Smith, shell-shocked veteran, provides the tragic counterpoint to Clarissa's social world. The sentences are lyrical, associative, building meaning through accumulation. Woolf was finding her method, the one that would carry her through To the Lighthouse and The Waves. The party arrives. The guests assemble. Life blazes up from the ordinary.