Vanessa and Virginia [Hardcover]

Susan Sellers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2009

"You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you really loved me."

Vanessa and Virginia are sisters, best friends, bitter rivals, and artistic collaborators. As children, they fight for attention from their overextended mother, their brilliant but difficult father, and their adored brother, Thoby. As young women, they support each other through a series of devastating deaths, then emerge in bohemian Bloomsbury, bent on creating new lives and groundbreaking works of art.  Through everything—marriage, lovers, loss, madness, children, success and failure—the sisters remain the closest of co-conspirators. But they also betray each other.

In this lyrical, impressionistic account, written as a love letter and elegy from Vanessa to Virginia, Sellers imagines her way into the heart of the lifelong relationship between writer Virginia Woolf and painter Vanessa Bell. With sensitivity, imagination, and fidelity to what it known of both lives, Sellers has created a powerful portrait of sibling rivalry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A delectable little book for anyone who ever admired the Bloomsbury group, Sellers's first novel speaks in painter Vanessa Bell's voice as she addresses her sister, Virginia Woolf. The story includes everything one ever imagined that happened in the intimate lives of the sisters and their astounding circle, which burst upon late Victorian England and shattered both the artistic and cultural boundaries of the times. Sellers begins during the girls' childhood with their beloved brother, and as they grow up, she taps into the incest, sexual encounters and homoerotic love with and among the many great minds of the era. The fictional world the author has recreated—of the sisters striving to perfect their respective art forms while trying to keep the reality of children and war and illness at bay—is full of color and intellectual promise and laced with despair and untimely deaths. While the mix of first- and second-person perspectives gets tedious (there are many variations on the theme of I sensed you watching me), the narrative's a genuine treat for Bloomsbury fans and those at least vaguely familiar with the milieu. (May)
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From Booklist

Written from the perspective of Vanessa Bell to her sister Virginia Woolf, this novel plumbs the relationships between the women, their family, and their bohemian Bloomsbury set. Vanessa writes directly to Virginia, confessing early on to a fear of where her sister’s cleverness will lead. Having staked out different avenues for their talent in childhood—Vanessa painting and Virginia writing—the girls fiercely vie for the attention of their parents and their beloved brother Thoby, only to be bereft at the loss of each. Though Virginia is apparently the stronger and bolder of the two, she proves to be more vulnerable following the death of their father. The sisters compete all their lives—through the Depression and war—for the attention, acclaim, and love of their spouses, friends, Vanessa’s children, and an assortment of lovers. Virginia is given to hysterics and emotional blackmail; Vanessa is plagued by self-doubt and resentment in this beautifully written exploration of tortured talent, sibling conflicts, domestic discord, disappointed love affairs, and emotional despair. --Vanessa Bush

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1ST edition (May 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151014744
• ISBN-13: 978-0151014743
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,054,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

SUSAN SELLERS is a professor of English at St. Andrews University in Scotland and coeditor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Virginia Woolf's works. She is a past recipient of the Cannongate Prize for new writing and is the author of many short stories and nonfiction books. This is her first novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unfamiliar take on a familiar subject, May 1, 2009

By 

Tracy Rowan "dargelos" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vanessa and Virginia (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Even if you are not familiar with the name "Bloomsbury" you will probably recognize the name of "Virginia Woolf." You might even know that she was a literary star in England in the first half of the 20th century. You might even know that she was the center of a group of talented, well-educated and often brilliant people who helped shape thought between the wars and beyond. John Maynard Keynes, the economist, whose economic model helped to bring the world out of the Great Depression, was one of Woolf's friends. You may know that Virginia died before WWII, a suicide who had for many years suffered from mental illness. What you might not know is that Virginia was only one of a pair of twin suns around whom this large, amorphous group revolved. The other, her elder sister Vanessa, an artist, was the other, the one who shone less fiercely, but who outlived her sister by many years.

The Stephen sisters, Vanessa and Virginia were the products of the Victorian era, and daughters of a selfish, domineering father. But upon his death, the young women struck out on their own to follow their instincts rather than the smothering rules by which they'd been raised. Virginia, who had been systematically molested by half-brother, George, entered into what became a sexless marriage with Leonard Woolf who nevertheless lived to care for her, becoming what Vanessa refers to within the book as the "apotheosis" of their devoted mother. Vanessa married Clive Bell, but both she and her husband seemed to tire of their relationship, and engaged in affairs with other people. The great love of Vanessa's life, at least according to this book, and I see no reason to doubt it since it does agree with what I've read of her, was the artist Duncan Grant. He was homosexual and was introduced into their circle as the lover of Vanessa's younger brother, Adrian. But Duncan also became her lover of many years and fathered her daughter, Angelica, who would later marry Grant's former lover, David Garnett. To say that the relationships in Bloomsbury were complicated is to understate.

What Sellers has done in "Vanessa and Virginia" is to explore the relationship between the sisters through the eyes of the less well-known Vanessa. She weaves the threads of their lives so deftly that it's difficult not to believe that we are reading something written by Vanessa. She explores the poles of sisterhood, both the attachment and the rivalry that complicate every interaction. She also allows us to watch the changes which happen within and outside of Vanessa's life, though from something of a distance, reinforcing the strength of the bonds of sisterhood. There is no one else in Vanessa's life, not even Duncan Grant, who has such a grip on her life as Virginia does.

Why not a biography instead of fiction? Perhaps because biographies can't, or at least should not presume to tell us what the principals are thinking, what their motives were. They can only report facts and occasionally speculate on the deeper, unspoken and unexamined currents of a person's life. But within the confines of a novel, all is fair. Sellers never demands a greater suspension of disbelief than that she is able, through the facts of Vanessa's life and a study of her art, to put herself into Vanessa's heart and mind. Because of this, she does succeed in convincing us of the truth of what she's written. She gives us an unconventional love story that will leave us aching, but satisfied because we have seen more deeply into this woman's heart than any biographer could have taken us.

Vanessa and Virginia isn't an easy read. It requires patience and attention. You don't need to know anything about Bloomsbury, but your enjoyment of the novel will of course be greater if you do. It works on virtually any level of familiarity. If you have any interest at all in the era, in Bloomsbury, in the life of Virginia Woolf, I think you'll enjoy V&V. If you have none of these things, but are still capable of being moved by a story of sisters and their bonds, then I think V&V might well please you, too.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unconventional, But Productive Lives, June 9, 2009

By 

Stephanie DePue (Carolina Beach, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vanessa and Virginia (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

"Vanessa & Virginia," by Susan Sellers, is a fictional treatment of the lives of one of the more renowned pairs of twentieth century sisters: the British Stephen girls, Vanessa and Virginia. They were the wealthy, London-born, privately educated, society-oriented daughters of Sir Leslie Stephen, a notable author/critic/mountaineer, and Julia Prinsep Jackson, a famous India-born beauty. The sisters, after the deaths of their parents, were to move to Bloomsbury, the London neighborhood of the British Museum, with their brothers Thoby and Adrian. Once in Bloomsbury, they would all begin to socialize with a group of artists and writers who would find communal fame as the Bloomsbury Group.

Vanessa was an artist and interior decorator who would marry Clive Bell and have two sons by him, Julian, who died during the Spanish Civil War, and Quentin. She and Bell had an open marriage, during which each took lovers; in both cases, frequently from the ranks of well-known men considered homosexual in orientation. Vanessa had affairs with art critic Roger Fry, and painter Duncan Grant, who fathered her daughter Angelica, whom Bell raised as his own. During World War II, Vanessa moved with Grant, and his homosexual lover David Garnett, to the Sussex countryside for the duration.

Virginia, a novelist/essayist/publisher, was to marry writer Leonard Woolf in 1922: she referred to him as a "penniless Jew" in her writings. They were a prominent writing couple, also associated with the Bloomsbury Group: they would found the Hogarth Press, and become printers and publishers, as well. Virginia wrote several highly-praised books, Mrs. Dalloway, (1925); To The Lighthouse, (1927), and Orlando, (1928). She also wrote the internationally famed, book-length essay "A Room of One's Own," (1929), with its often-quoted saying, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Virginia was to have a long-term affair with Vita Sackville-West, a wealthy society writer and gardener, for whom she wrote "Orlando." Virginia was, unfortunately, to drown herself in 1941, during the early days of World War II. She put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the river Ouse, near her home. She has been posthumously diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, never treated in her lifetime, which resulted in several nervous breakdowns. She has also written that as young girls, she and Vanessa were subject to sexual abuse from their half-brothers George and Gerald.

Sellers' book opens upon the sisters as young girls, leading rather privileged lives, all told; let's face it, they inherited looks, brains, money, and social standing. They were best friends, rivals, artistic collaborators, and possibly lovers, as they would be all their lives. This book is clearly based upon mountains of research, and is the first to imagine the sisters' lifelong relationship from Vanessa's point of view. It is a riveting, sympathetic and sensitive treatment of unconventional, but productive lives. Now, mind you, it is fiction, not a biography: written in a style generally called epistolary: that is, as letters or notes from Vanessa to Virginia. And sisters, of course, have no need to give each other backgrounds on their parents or other siblings. I went online elsewhere to gather the biographical information in my introductory paragraphs, above. If you are not going to be comfortable reading a book without this background information, be warned. I also think, as the Stephen sisters were very real, I would have liked to see some portraits of them, and the people in their lives. Furthermore, the author frequently has Vanessa describe the paintings, or interiors she'd created, and that's remarkably interesting, but "Show and tell" is always more engrossing than just "tell." I wish author or publisher had seen fit to include some relevant illustrations of Vanessa's work.

Susan Sellers is a professor of English at Scotland's ancient, prestigious St. Andrews University, and is coeditor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Virginia Woolf's works. Sellers is a past recipient of the Canongate Prize for New Writing; and is author of many short stories and books of nonfiction. This is her first published novel.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Bloomsbury had become so infamous!", May 11, 2009

By 

Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vanessa and Virginia (Hardcover)

In a heartbreaking ode to her literary sister, Vanessa Bell pours out her heart to Virginia Woolf in prose that reflects the bright and shifting geometries of her life as a painter. Lighting up parts of Vanessa's heart that have, for many years, been hidden, Susan Sellers attempts to shed light on a complex and multi-faceted sibling relationship where love and anger, grief and delight, shame and pride, even the petty jealousies and insecurities of two women are eventually exposed. The elder sister of Virginia, Vanessa was a well-known painter and like her sister was a central figure in the Bloomsbury group. When she was seventeen, Vanessa began to take drawing classes and entered the painting school of Royal Academy Schools in 1901. In 1907, Vanessa married Clive Bell, but was soon having a love affair with the artist and critic Roger Fry, and later fell in love forever with the talented artist Duncan Grant.

Vanessa was very disappointed and discouraged in her early career as an artist. Her life was often wearied by the fame of Virginia who was beloved by the public for her writings and considered always larger than life. Bound by the strictures of Victorian England, we first meet Vanessa as a child, living in her family home at Hyde Park Gate and playfully attentive to her little sister, adoring the way she watches her accomplishes things Virginia cannot yet achieve. Dominated by a self-centered and controlling father and a mother who reeks of goodness and unstinting sense of duty and that of her loving brothers, the seeds of Vanessa's artistic sensibilities are sown. Yet Vanessa fails to see her sister's desire to catch up and topple her and she fears where her sister's cleverness will lead.

Peering back through the alleys of the past, Sellers unfolds an exquisite a portrait of a woman who shared her sisters dream, sketching out a life where both were free to pursue their chosen art, escaping the strictures of their virtuous surroundings and then falling in with the morally scandalous Bloomsbury Group. The novel is ultimately portrait of two women, conspirators in life and art, Vanessa welcoming and presiding; Virginia intellectually agile, eloquent, and daring. Inspired by what Virginia says and does and rejoicing in her triumphs, Vanessa is always happiest when immersing herself in the conundrum of her pictures as she grapples with space, form, light, dark, and contour and texture. The prose is often passionate and beautiful, the scenes of Vanessa and Virginia's early and later life visualized as if it were a painting, the colors are dark, black, gray, russet, "with flashes of crimson from the fire." While the first half of the novel focuses on Vanessa's family life, the momentum of her affairs with Roger and Duncan carry the second half forward, and also that of Virginia's slow and painful descent into depression and eventual suicide. In the end, this is a deeply intuitive account of two passionate women, both content to freely fly in the face of sexual convention and early 20th century propriety and both willing to forsake everything for their art. Mike Leonard may 09.