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Vanessa and Virginia

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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.

"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.

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.

Vanessa and Virginia tells the story of the relationship between famed sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, from Vanessa's perspective. In theory it's an interesting concept for a novel, but sadly this book does not live up to its potential. I found it very difficult to follow. One problem was that large amounts of time seemed to pass between sections with little or no clues to indicate to the readers when the action was taking place or what had occurred in the intermediary. Another problem was that characters were only occasionally properly introduced. I found myself needing to do several internet searches just to figure out who some of the characters were. Perhaps people with detailed knowledge of the lives of the sisters won't find these issues troublesome, but they were certainly enough to put me off Vanessa and Virginia.

Susan Sellers, a noted British scholar of Virginia Woolf, attempts in this novel to portray the relationship between the famous author and her elder sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Actually, it is more Vanessa's story than Virginia's, being a series of short memories and personal reflections, more subjective than objective. These follow the lives of the two women from childhood, through the establishment of their respective fields, into marriages, extra-marital affairs, and battles with mental illness; they end with Virginia's suicide at the age of 59. The last image of all, of Vanessa watching the pages of the book being carried away one by one in the river that drowned her sister, perfectly captures the tone of these fleeting impressions that are both (as the book jacket says) a love-letter and an elegy.

But a successful novel? I don't think so. Sellers gives no footnotes and virtually no clues to references that may not be known to the general reader. She can also jump confusingly around in time. For those who have a general sense of the time-line, already know the work of the two women, and are familiar with the main figures in the Bloomsbury Group, this will make fascinating reading as a kind of parallel text. But all the references are single-name only -- Clive, Roger, Duncan, Bunny, Mary, Leonard, Carrington -- and they can get very confusing in passages in which Vanessa is mentally shuttling between three different lovers in a single sentence (doubly so in that many of her lovers were bisexual and also had affairs with one another). Readers who come to this book hoping to find out more about Virginia Woolf will be disappointed; the writer comes more to life in a few pages of Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS than in this whole book, and her portrayal of her own family, filtered through the lens of fiction in TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, far exceeds anything that Sellers does here.

But there is some interest in her portrayal of Vanessa's sensibility as an artist. It would be worthwhile to Google a selection of her paintings and refer to them as one reads. Even though Sellers has Vanessa say "I paint first and foremost... so as not to feel", she manages to convey a lot through her descriptions of the painting process. Admittedly, Sellers cuts a few corners in order to do so. Vanessa Bell was one of the earliest English Post-impressionists, strongly influenced by French artists such as Gauguin. Most of her works are figurative, but Sellers has her describing the early stages of painting, which temporarily seem more abstract than then final version, as though by laying out a design in pure color she were painting directly with emotion. Sellers also has a habit of taking a painting that does not come from the period in question, and have Vanessa describe it almost as a mysterious object painted by somebody else. But literal quibbles aside, Sellers does have a real feel for the creative process -- though oddly enough, more in the visual arts than in her own field of writing.

Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell were sisters, conspirators, and rivals: one was an outspoken writer, married but childless, while the other was a painter who kept her emotions to herself but was a devoted mother and (sometimes hopeless) lover. Sellers tells their story from Vanessa's point of view, in a series of letters addressed to Virginia after her river suicide in 1941. She describes events from their childhoods and on throughout their lives, touching only lightly on each event as Vanessa remembers it.

Readers who are unfamiliar with the Bloomsbury group are likely to be confused by Sellers' references to people and events with no context or explanations; for example, on one page, Vanessa and Virginia learn of Lytton Strachey's death and wonder how Dora Carrington (a painter who lived with him and adored him) will handle it, but it's never referred to again, even though not every reader is going to know what happened. (Carrington committed suicide soon afterward.) For those who do know Bloomsbury, it's easy to fill in the blanks, but I can only imagine the frustration of someone who doesn't.

Unfortunately, I also found _Vanessa and Virginia_ unsatisfying from the perspective of someone who does know a lot about their lives and their circle. When I read historical fiction dealing with historical people, I want it to show me something that I couldn't have gotten from reading biography or history; I want to gain a deeper understanding of those lives through the imaginative portrayal of them. Although Sellers does delineate the close relationship between the sisters well, I didn't gain any more understanding than I already had through reading non-fiction books about them (especially Jane Dunn's _Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell: A Very Close Conspiracy_, which Sellers credits as a source). In the end, her novel is too impressionistic, too evanescent to satisfy; it's ambitious and beautifully written, but it's more a watercolor sketch than a full portrait.

The relationship between sisters close in age is always a complicated one. The sisters don't have to be famous or creative or living a startlingly unusual lifestyle to be drawn both together and apart with equal ferocity. The part of this book that rang most true to me was the undercurrent of feelings between these sisters, which was deftly portrayed by the author. Vanessa and Virginia were both artists, one a painter, the other, the iconic Virginia Woolf. Both were also, as I gathered from the story, deeply self-absorbed while also absorbed in one another as an alter ego of sorts. The age in which they lived and the Bloomsbury circle in which they traveled made their lives appear almost bizarre. It seemed many in this artistic group were given to relationships with both men and women and not the first eyebrow was raised as it was apparently thought too ordinary to mention.

The writing is certainly exemplary in this novel, but the style of separate, often unconnected scenes with much left up to the imagination, was difficult for me. The fact, revealed at the end, that the story was written by Vanessa as a personal letter of sorts to her sister helped the style make sense and should have been shared at the beginning, as it would have allowed me, as a reader, to be less frustrated by it.

I think devotees of Vanessa Bell or Virginia Woolf or those of their circle will consider this book a must-read and highly successful as it mirrors their mood of creativity cloaked in the lethargy of privilege. Unfortunately, I am a less sophisticated reader and found the constant introspection and dissection more tedious than compelling. I appreciated the description of the tangled relationship between the sisters, but not the equally prominent description of each paint color choice or brush stroke.

In Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers, Vanessa succinctly summarizes her relationship with her legendary sister, Virginia Woolf: "I might struggle against the call, I might even try to quell it, but my existence was not separate from yours." The novel tells of the sisters' childhood as they cope with a rash of ugly deaths and develop their talents. It then follows them as they marry, reproduce, and negotiate their fame and obscurity. It discreetly touches on depression, incest, and suicide without much depth instead relying on the rivalry between the sisters to provide the story's tension.

This slim novel is told through "impressionistic" accounts which are more like mini scenes with no linear time progression. Many pages detail dreams or vivid descriptions of Vanessa's paintings. It's is Vanessa's version we get, but she addresses the entire book to her departed sister Virginia which generates an odd mix of first person/second person narrative. This effective approach lets the reader stand in for Virginia Woolf hence becoming privy to the candid conversation of sisters. The way Sellers constructs this story is as telling of the characters as the actual events she describes.

Sellers doesn't stray far from what is known in her depiction of these tortured artists. Although this story relates the sisters' story as it affects Vanessa, by forcing the readers to consider Vanessa's point of view, one must reconsider Virginia. The novel wavers from brilliant to annoyingly flowery and will most likely amuse Woolf's fans. However, Vanessa and Virginia will definitely endear itself to sisters as they recognize their own relationships amongst the familial rivalry.

Vanessa & Virginia by Susan Sellers is a novel that imagines the relationship between Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, sisters and alleged artistic rivals as told solely through the first person perspective of Vanessa. (At first this confused me because the title implied that the story would be told through both women but by the end of the second chapter I realized that this was Vanessa's story about her life and relationship with Virginia.)

I suppose it is inevitable to compare this new novel with The Hours by Michael Cunningham and this is unfortunate because while the latter is brilliant the former is clever, at best. Frankly, I'm not convinced it is even that. But it is an interesting attempt at envisioning the relationship between these two women who lived their lives in a way that more often than not flouted societal moors during a time when women were finally empowering themselves, gaining the vote, etc.

Unfortunately, where this book most blatantly fails the author's assumption that the reader knows something about the sisters. Names are dropped or alluded to without much if any contextual meaning. Even when there is a war in England, it is not clarified which war is being experienced. Only a reader who knows when the two were born would know that the first war mentioned is The Great War, World War I. A reader who lacks the contextual relevance of the details will not appreciate much that is given.

It also fails in the obvious complication of Woolf's suicidal depression that seems to barely touch Bell's own life or emotions. Distressed to see her sister's suffering, never does she seem to contemplate her own mental stability or how she, herself, may be dealing with depression. Given the artistic leaning of both sister's, I find it remarkable that Bell, as defined and delineated by Sellers, is so distanced from everyone and everything beyond her own narcissism.

There is also the fact that Sellers has chosen to allude to the more salacious speculations about the sisters' lives and, while I appreciate her not going into details of incest, there is really no narrative reason to imply, as the back-cover also mentions, the "possible" lesbian/incest connection between the two. Because Sellers only alludes to these things, they are never fully realized and the consequences to the psyches of the characters are not explored. Bold enough to mention them, Sellers completely drops the ball by not delving deeply into the damage that incest creates within a family.

Someone who is not familiar with Virginia Woolf, let alone her less iconic sister, the Bloomsbury group, or the final outcome of the story will not enjoy this novel. Sellers not only chooses to tell the story only from the point-of-view of Vanessa--a choice that ultimately is best--also has the protagonist writing not to a general reader but a specific one. Specifically her sister, Virginia.

The intrusion of "you," meaning Virginia, creates an odd disconnect. The tone of the writing is not intimate, does not sound at all like a letter or even an intimate memoir of one person's love for another. And yet the intimacy of a first-person I writing to a second-person you is felt and creates an oddly removed relationship between the real "you," the reader of the text, and the text itself. An author should never aspire to remove the reader from the text and this is the end result of this odd style choice.

Only a die hard Woolf follower would want to read this novel only to be disappointed; someone who is not familiar with Woolf will not have the patience with the style or tone of the novel. In other words, I cannot imagine an audience for this novel. Perhaps had Sellers dared to go more deeply into her subjects, as she would have done had this been nonfiction, those who adore or at least are versed in Woolf's works and life would read with enthusiasm. As it is, there's really nothing new or even remarkably interesting to be experienced in the pages of this book.

Vanessa and Virginia / 978-0-151-01474-3

Not knowing anything at all about the lives of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, I approached this novel with some minor trepidation, concerned that I would not be able to follow the narrative in any meaningful fashion. I could not have been more wrong, for this deeply lyrical novel is both accessible and gripping, haunting the reader through to the final pages.

Written in an intensely beautiful, highly personal letter, Vanessa writes at the end of her life to her younger sister, Virginia. Virginia the spoiled, Virginia the aloof, Virginia the adored, Virginia the suicidal and depressed. Vanessa transports us to the days of their childhood, recalling little scenes, tiny tableaus of their lives, before skipping lightly, painfully ahead to the next shared memory. She speaks, haltingly, of her lost childhood. How she was forced to fill in as 'mother' after their own mother died; how their father hounded her with abuse and neediness that drained her, even as Virginia drained her with her own needs and wants and desires. Even here, we see the shadow of deep depression that looms over this talented family, and especially these two vibrant sisters.

As Vanessa continues her style, always in a deeply lyrical and highly accessible tone, we travel through the lives of these authors. We see the two sisters, loving each other deeply and yet keeping each other distant from the fear that can only be felt towards those who know our inner faults deeply and intimately. As Vanessa is unappreciated (her own paintings selling for a fraction of Virginia's highly praised writings) and unloved (first by her husband, who grows distant with the birth of their first child; then by her lover who steadfastly prefers men to his 'dear Nessa'), we feel her innermost pain as she struggles to be the perpetual mother to the needy men and unthinking children who surround her, with no one to ever mother her in return. Only Virginia can come close to fulfilling that need, and then only because she understands her sister more intimately than the men around her; she understand, at least, that Vanessa *has* needs, even if she is powerless to fulfill them.

This poignant novel is written with such fluidity that it is a pure joy to read, and yet the pages are so packed with meaning and deep sadness, that each page feels like a lifetime of effort. The reader feels at once intensely connected to Vanessa and understands her love for her sister, recognizes that this selfless sisterly love is one of mutual need for a soul mate, for someone who can understand, however imperfectly, the thoughts and needs harbored within. In this regard, "Vanessa and Virginia" reminded me, hauntingly, of Margaret Atwood's superb The Blind Assassin, where another pair of sisters suffers the same painful attachment, an attachment born at least as much from shared pains and horrors of childhood as it is of shared flesh and blood.

A word about the sexuality in this novel. Although the back cover references the rumors of potential incest between the sisters, and although the book lightly hints that this is a possibility, the references are so swift and veiled that I am not certain I would have recognized them, had I not been 'primed' by the back cover to look for them. There are casual mentions throughout of the unorthodox (at the time, at least) sexual relationships between the members of the artistic set who follow Vanessa and Virginia, but there is very little overt sensuality in this book - rather, I would describe this instead as a sort of memoir, as the fictional Vanessa pours out her heart onto the page, skimming lightly over the details of her loves and lovers, and instead focusing on the task of inscribing, to her sister, the details of her life, from her own perspective.

In the end, despite my utter lack of knowledge of either the real Vanessa Bell or the real Virginia Woolf, I still found this novel to be a solemn joy - sobering and touching - and I recommend it strongly. I have no doubt that a Woolf or Bell enthusiast would derive even more pleasure from this novel, but I can say for certain that this novel is equally accessible to neophytes.

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~ Ana Mardoll