Vanessa & Virginia

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 soulmate, 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: A Novel, 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

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 occasional

As an English major with an interest in the arts, I spent many years absorbed by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury group. I read numerous biographies. Yet I have never read anything as absorbing as this new novel by Susan Sellers. From childhood onwards, we are inside Vanessa's head, reading her thoughts, seeing her viewpoint, experiencing her life. As the older and (supposedly less successful) sister, she experiences a good degree of unconscious jealousy towards Virginia and often feels stifled by her home and family situation. However, we also are able to feel her awareness that Virginia envies Vanessa her children, her freedom, her ability to create a warm and loving environment wherever she settles. The novel is not a biography but does bring the characters to life in a way that no biography ever could. The reader becomes the characters, goes inside their heads and lives their lives--it is an enchanting journey that one wishes would never end.

The comparisons to Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS are inevitable, and not entirely because of the subject matter. Delightful though the Cunningham novel may be, author Sellers here has a poignant, yet piquant voice in her tale of two maximally artsy and belles lettres-ish sisters, candent in their love for each other and likewise, in their rivalry-laden literary gymkhanas. Sellers is a Woolf scholar and her deep knowledge of her characters, coupled with some remarkable fictive abilities, makes for some vivid and vivacious characterization. The writing here simply often sings and these coloratura divas soar on the lightspeed of the song. This is truly great reading for anyone who enjoys great writing, strong, interesting, if not always entirely likeable characters. If you are a Woolf fan (or perhaps even an Edith Wharton or Evelyn Waugh or Louis Auchincloss lover), there's something here for you. Sellers is coy about the precise intimacy of the sisters' relationship, but it's pretty obvious those Stephen girls were also of the Sapphic sisterhood.

If you've read Virginia Woolf, especially "To the Lighthouse," To the Lighthouse (Annotated) or if you know something about Bloomsbury, you're in for a treat. "Vanessa and Virginia" is an impressionistic look at the love/hate relationship between two famous sisters, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, key players in the intellectual rebellion against Victorianism that began around WWI in Britain. After being raised in a lonely, restricted household by an unstable mother and distant father, the sisters broke away after their parents' deaths and lived lives where art, love and friendship had priority over all else. Vanessa became a painter, well-known in her time, but she was overshadowed by the fame of younger sister Virginia. The story is told by Vanessa in a letter to Virginia, and even if you know how much of it ends, the tension of their relationship carries the story. The two shared lovers, households, children and their art, always competing, but unable to live without each other. The Bloomsbury group experimented with sexual freedom to an extent that would be considered daring even today, and the author compellingly displayed the pain associated with a life where freedom rather than commitment is the highest value. Vanessa also lived a life of great personal loss, with the deaths of her parents, son, sister, lover; she survived them all. I especially loved the passages in the book where we see Vanessa painting, and I stopped a few times to look at the works described (check out the Tate Gallery website). Critics are right that if you have no background, you'll be lost, but background is easy to find. It will be well worth it.