Reviews

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

francesca_stout's review against another edition

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2.0

I've never been so disappointed by a book in all my forty eight years. I saw the film in my early twenties, and was so spellbound that I vowed to get around to reading the book and having a fat ginger cat called Orlando one day. Well, I finally read it, and I haven't the words to tell you how irritating, self indulgent and ridiculous it is. I could deal with the concept of Orlando living over 400 years and changing gender, but when others did likewise, a baby seemingly appears and disappears, and a writer violates her own rules and descends into pointless waffling, I'm out. It took me two months to read this slim volume; that's how much I didn't look forward to finishing it. I'm not inclined to read any of Woolf's other work.

lckades's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.75

xandibandi's review against another edition

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funny reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

beatriz1998's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

"Estamos em novembro. Depois de novembro vem dezembro. Mais tarde, janeiro, fevereiro, março e abril. Depois de abril, vem maio. Seguem-se junho, julho e agosto. O próximo é setembro. Então outubro, e eis que estamos de volta a novembro, com um ano inteiro consumado."

lapittenger's review against another edition

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3.0

Some lovely poetic passages and I see the humor and love at work in this book, but I have to stop trying to read Virginia Woolf novels - just not for me. I tend to drift off.

sfrobb's review against another edition

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3.0

i was really excited to read this but it really didn't live up to expectations. loved the first half, but by the last part it got so tedious and i was just waiting to be done. am sad

tea_anne4's review against another edition

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medium-paced

5.0

wonderlander00's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

e_rica's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

bedcarp's review against another edition

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4.0

orlando is a strange beast, and possibly the most complex of woolf's novels on a first read. above all it is exuberantly, wonderfully satirical, featuring some of the most bizarrely comic passages i've read in any book (no spoilers, but if you're of the impression that modernism is a bleak, joyless movement pick this up immediately for a lovely marriage of textual experimentation with ornate wit) as well as one of the best surveys of english literature and history through the ages. like many of her other novels, orlando purports to capture the complexity of lived experience and the inexorable flow of time, the eternity contained in the present, but it does so with a fantastic and colourful vision completely unlike anything else in her oeuvre. after numerous courtly romances, exotic sojourns and illicit trysts, orlando, the immortal, timeless, genderless hero(ine) of the novel, can finally no longer be contained within the construct of their own biography, their existence in its pure essence only "representable" by evading the imposition of time's linearity and externality of experience. it is the wild goose, at last.