A review by taoeric9
Orlando by Virginia Woolf

4.0

Fun romp. Felt self-indulgent at times, but at other points, Virginia Woolf really cuts to the heart of the matter, sometimes quite scathingly and always with great fun. I'm not sure I really understand the gender essentialist viewpoint she takes in this book, and I would like to read more about it. I think any conversation about the book should bring up the way race is treated in the book, as the book opens with a casually presented image of extreme racial violence and never really reexamines this attitude. It adds a complexity to the book which I'm not sure that Woolf intended. How can one puncture so deeply into the human experience—Orlando's wants, yearnings, surprises, trepidations, mysterious devotions—and harbor unexamined hateful attitudes?