The Orchard

This is a graceful and unique book that blends fiction with intellectual theory and even biography to explore the themes of agency and self-identity in women's lives. Modjeska's style is unique, using what she calls an essay form to tell the stories of four fictional women characters and such well-known artists and writers as Stella Bowen, Artemisia Gentileschi and Virginia Woolf. Modjeska and her characters discuss such concepts as the formation and preservation of self-identity, with the intellectual theories surrounding these concerns framed, refreshingly, in the context of women's everyday lives. The complexity of this book means it can be read over and over, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who is interested in sexual politics, art history, relationships, literature - or to anyone who loves an engrossing story, well-developed characters and beautiful language.

Modjeska's exquisite novel is told by an unnamed woman who relates her own story, her friends' stories, and the stories of famous women, all woven together to give a greater picture of the lives of women as artists. Virginia Woolf, Stella Bowen, Artemisia Gentileschi, and others are threaded into this vibrant tapestry. The final fable of the princess with the silver hands is actually the single basis of the rest of the book: the idea of women finding their own agency in the world, whether in art or in daily life or in relationships with men and/or women. The language is supple and complex, which might deter some readers seeking light reading, but the sheer beauty of Modjeska's writing seduces and inspires. It's like an essay, but through fiction, as if "A Room of One's Own" were a faerie tale of sorts. "The Orchard" is a powerful book that deserves many visits.

...The Orchard is about a series of issues that recur from place to place in the book: learning from one's past; how women can use their special qualities to advantage even when dominated by a man/men; how a particular event can signify many things when seen in idfferent contexts - the rape of Artemisia Gentileschi, the flowing of the winterbourne, the story of the orchard etc. It also serves as a good precursor to Stravinsky's Lunch to be published shortly in the USA but which I read when it came out in Australia a year ago. Another theme and one that links the two books is the practice of representation through painting and the personal searches and enquiries that lie behind pictures that we see in galleries or in books. The Orchard is one of the most thought-provoking, wise and deeply wordly books that I've read for some time.