A review by dkai
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
I don't know how to rate this.
On the one hand, it is a brilliant, genre-bending, gender-bending parody biography of her friend/fellow writer/lover Vita Sackville-West as if Vita had lived for hundreds of years. Woolf is cutting loose, having fun, and being funny in a way that is not associated with her other books. Her insights and introspection are there in plenty of highlightable passages, but there's more of a twinkle in her eye. Time, fame, gender, writing, death, and love are carefully and whimsically utilized to get at the core of the subject (a subject who is extremely extra).
It is also sometimes shockingly casually racist and classist in ways that are not even essential to the book. It's like Woolf prepared a delightful meal and then garnished it with lead shavings. The heart of the meal is still there, but you are left thinking "why is that there?" It's ultimately very disappointing to see.
On the one hand, it is a brilliant, genre-bending, gender-bending parody biography of her friend/fellow writer/lover Vita Sackville-West as if Vita had lived for hundreds of years. Woolf is cutting loose, having fun, and being funny in a way that is not associated with her other books. Her insights and introspection are there in plenty of highlightable passages, but there's more of a twinkle in her eye. Time, fame, gender, writing, death, and love are carefully and whimsically utilized to get at the core of the subject (a subject who is extremely extra).
It is also sometimes shockingly casually racist and classist in ways that are not even essential to the book. It's like Woolf prepared a delightful meal and then garnished it with lead shavings. The heart of the meal is still there, but you are left thinking "why is that there?" It's ultimately very disappointing to see.