Customer Reviews

Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury

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I was on vacation and came upon this book the day before leaving Santa Cruz. I picked it up and something said "buy me" (had read no reviews, author interviews, been 'told to' 'she's hot' etc.). As my friend drove us back to L.A. I began reading Nunez's book aloud. I kept on doing so. I read for 4.5 hours until finishing. My throat hurt and I developed pains from talking aloud so long but... I could not stop, nor did my driving partner want me to (I read past the point where we were to switch!). MITZ is an inventive, intelligent, throuroughly researched and alive creation. Unlike Kirkus, I felt the historical positioning and the awareness of the times deepened the tale and made it, at times, an absolutely miraculous achievement of intellectual imagination. And can I say, that Nunez babe can write write write. Clean, pure, prose. I got on Amazon to write this and to order every other thing she's written. Nunez you are great! and HarperCollins put together a great looking book as well, a too often neglected part of the modern reading experience. Viva MITZ!

Her prose is elegant and pleasurable, her scholarship particular, and her imagination delicate. After I read this book I wanted to rush out and read more Woolf and Nunez (and did). Please read to the end, it's so simple and resonant.

No, I am not talking about Ross' monkey Marcel from Friends. This Marmoset is Mizt, adopted by the literary giants Virginia and Leonard Woolfe. Through there richness, elegence and love for one another (and Mitz) we read a book detailing the biography (life) of Mitz. Via trips, memoirs and entries of diaries detailed by the authors in the written work. This is a delightful little book where we find that Mitz has a personality and is not just a monkey.
It is a charming, witty fun read, well worth a second or third read. Definetly a must for all.

Sigrid Nunez is a contemporary American novelist with a quiet reputation as a writer's writer. "Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury" is a short novel Nunez wrote in 1998 about the household pet of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Some readers might consign the book to the facetious genre of pet biography. I place it, instead, securely within the category of terrifically enjoyable reads. This is not because I am a fan of Bloomsbury but because of the reasons expressed below. (If you ARE a lover of all things Bloomsbury, then you have even more reason to grab a copy of the book.)

In the summer of 1934 a sickly marmoset -- "a mere scrap of a monkey; you could have balanced her on your palm, like a fur apple, a head no bigger than a walnut" -- came into the care of Leonard Woolf, who gained the animal's affection and nursed her back to health. For the next few years Mitz was a noteworthy presence in Bloomsbury society -- a "witness to famous scenes." In telling the story of Mitz, Nunez's successfully blends the scattered references to the wee creature found in Bloomsbury records -- in letters, diaries, and memoirs -- with her own novelistic imagination. The charming result is the reconstruction of a brief yet full life.

Nunez's writing style is simple and self-effacing. She prizes clarity above all. Hers is a very American voice, in the way E.B. White and F. Scott Fitzgerald are American voices. One reviewer of "Mitz" noted how its prose unfurls in so relaxed a manner as to resemble, at times, a children's book. Nunez herself has mentioned this was the original plan for the tale.

Nunez avoids traps that otherwise would sink the book's quiet message and its quiet charms. Through the perceptions of a wily marmoset (a stranger in a strange land) the reader is led to see human folly in a sober light. But Nunez measures out this message (the objective strangeness of mankind) winsomely, which saves the tale from becoming a clichéd satire.

Within its slim frame the book accomplishes many things. It is a playful writer's holiday. It is a recreation of a time and place in history. It is a deft exercise in stagecraft requiring the author to direct the movements of heavy-weight actors, among them T.S. Eliot, John Maynard Keynes, and Vita Sackville-West -- not to forget the quintessential literary power couple known affectionately by friends (and not so kindly by enemies) as "the Woolves." The book becomes a window into a storied household and the quotidian pleasures sheltered therein (reading, writing, eating, talking). Nunez's touch is light as air as she anatomizes domesticity via the device of a domesticated (or, for the most part domesticated) pet. "Mitz" charts the breathing of a successful marriage. It offers lessons in patience and protectiveness and love.

In its final dozen pages the book takes a breathtaking turn. Nunez gambles on her simple and dispassionate prose meeting a new challenge: recounting the young Mitz's expulsion from paradise, as men invade her South American tropical rainforest home and seize her and dozens of her fellow creatures for exportation. It's a winning gamble on Nunez's part. The reader feels the harrowing experience of forced dislocation, the pain of the refugee, broken and condemned to live out her life far from home. Parallels to the devastations that were about to descend on whole populations in World War II are inescapable. Then there is the parallel sadness closer to home: just as nothing can hold back Mitz's swiftly-approaching date with death, so too can nothing stay the inexorable decline in Virginia Woolf's mental state.

Read "Mitz" and you will agree Nunez is a wonderful writer.

[Final Note: Nunez was inspired by Virginia Woolf's 1932 book, "Flush," a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Brown's cocker spaniel. "Flush," it appears, is currently out of print, although used copies are available through Amazon. Its full text is also available online; you can find it by doing a Google search of three words, Wikipedia, Flush and biography; click on the first search result, then scroll down to the bottom of the article for a link to the E-Text of "Flush."]

(Mike Ettner)

I don't know much about the Woolfs, and I haven't watched The Hours yet, but none of that has prevented me from thoroughly enjoying this thin novel. The Woolfs adopted a marmoset, a very tiny Amazonian monkey, and this is the story of her life. Mitz the marmoset gets to hang out with the Bloomsbury circle, and Sigrid Nunez masterly portrays the day to day in the Woolfs household. Much of the story is of course imagined, but there is a great deal of reality, gathered from the Woofs' writing, their biographies, and other sources.

More than anything, I am very happy to have discovered a new author whose style is seductive and effortless, yet complex. Her style reminds me a bit of Fredrica Wagman and J.P. Donleavy. I shall read more of her work.

MITZ compares favourably (in both skill and intent) to FLUSH, Virginia Woolf's own "biography" of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel. A small but compelling literary tradition continues.... Does Ms. Nunez have a pet?

MITZ: THE MARMOSET OF BLOOMSBURY by Sigrid Nunez is one of those rare and special books that light up our imaginations and transport us to another place and time. I'm a fan of the short novel or novella form (less is more), and love most things "Bloomsbury"; I've read THE HOURS, BLOOMSBURY PIE by Regina Marler, THE PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE, and numerous books by Virginia Woolf, and seen films of these as well as CARRINGTON. Thus MITZ seems rather like old home week, a reunion of sorts.

In the years just prior to WWII Leonard Woolf adopted a friend's pet marmoset. This is NOT a biography of the marmoset (though the author does pay homage to Mrs. Woolf's biography of the Browning's cocker spaniel FLUSH), but rather a lovingly drawn portrait of a couple and the unique relationship they share with this most unusual addition to their family.

We follow the celebrated couple from Monk's House to Tavistock Square (and back again several times) and on excursions throughout Europe which include a frightening encounter with a stromtrooper in Nazi Germany. All the usual Bloomsbury characters are here: Vanessa Bell, Vita Sackville-West, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, etc. The author has meticulously researched her subject. However, the piece never feels studious or labored, but rather flows with a fluidity and grace that serves the author's subjects and readers with equal aplomb.

Anyone who enjoyed THE UNCOMMON READER or 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD is sure to treasure MITZ.

I'd read writings of Virginia Woolf and writing about Virginia Woolf but after reading MITZ I feel like I know Virginia Woolf better than ever before. To say nothing of MITZ who became so real to me....Unique and a delightful read.

Sigrid Nunwz takes as her starting point this fact : between 1934 and 1938, Leonard and Virginia Woolf owned a marmoset. With this, she writes a brief, charming novel, imagining the life of the tiny, sickly monkey (constantly cold in drizzly England) within the Woolf household. During there years, the Bloomsbury group wanes (Mitz scampers up and down the, now stout, legs of Vita Sackville-West). World War II looms large (Mitz captivates a stormtrooper when the Woolf's visit Germany - "Oh, the dear litle thing", he cries and lets them pass the roadblock). Mitz hears the comforting sounds of pen on paper as Virginia writes, but also hears her mutter, struggling to complete "The Years". Similar to Virginia's own novel "Flush", a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, "Mitz" is a delightful evocation of a time and place, and of two extraordinary people and their favored pet.

This is an interesting fictionalized version of Virginia and Leonard Woolf's life during four and a half years with a marmoset. It is a quick, fun read. But Nunez's previous novels were absolutely compelling, and I expected more from this one.