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Orlando: A Biography - Community Reviews back

by Virginia Woolf
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Musings/Träumereien/Devaneios
Musings/Träumereien/Devaneios rated it 6 years ago
(Original Review, 2002-06-18)I’m probably in a minority, but I find Woolf hugely overrated. A snob in the way that Wilde was a snob before her, sucking up to the wealthy and titled and, like Wilde, happy to be unfaithful if it ingratiated her with the gentry. People go on about ‘a room of one’s own’...
Domhnall
Domhnall rated it 8 years ago
Virginia Woolf cannot write badly but this book is entirely self indulgent and, despite some beautiful language, says very little of significance. In so far as it could be accused of having a plot, it does open up the possibility of interesting reflections, for example on the differences between me...
A Man With An Agenda
A Man With An Agenda rated it 9 years ago
December 4, 2015This time I read the book aloud, my partner had never read any Virginia Woolf before and has the tendency to fall asleep when reading anything that doesn't relate to work. During the course of the novel I, of course, lost track of many sentences, lost breath after third semicolons an...
BrokenTune
BrokenTune rated it 10 years ago
Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it ? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of hi...
shell pebble
shell pebble rated it 11 years ago
In tribute to her beloved friend, Woolf allows reality to submit entirely to feeling, spirit and personality, casting Vita Sackville-West as a time-traveller who changes sex at the age of thirty. The result is joyous, riotous, and rings with a deeper truth than 'straight' biography ever could - for ...
Lisa (Harmony)
Lisa (Harmony) rated it 11 years ago
Orlando is subtitled "a biography" and for the most part that's how it's written. As if Woolf was writing the biography of this member of the English nobility--who is 36 years old after over 300 years--and who switches genders from a man to a woman about half way through. So this is part historical ...
target acquired
target acquired rated it 11 years ago
Eccentric Musings (jakaEM)
Eccentric Musings (jakaEM) rated it 12 years ago
At the risk of writing a gushing, kneejerk non-review in the immediate flush of finishing, I think ... I think ... this is the one.You can have your lighthouses and your dalloways - they are (indisputably?) more literary, more artful (I write that; I don't know if it's true). And for all the blurb w...
Musings of a Bibliomaniac
Musings of a Bibliomaniac rated it 12 years ago
The most prudent way to review a Virginia Woolf book, perhaps, would be to write 'THIS IS STUPENDOUS. GENIUS. AMAZING. WHY HAVEN'T YOU READ THIS YET?' and leave it at that. Because not only does this relieve you of the responsibility of casting about for appropriate words to serenade Woolf but also ...
Book Trauma
Book Trauma rated it 12 years ago
While I adore serious works I return to humour and light fantasy a lot. It helps to cleanse my mind in between works and just have a bit of light entertainment. So was I ever surprised to find that Ms Woolf wrote something I could giggle at. (I'm not really prone to giggling but this was about as ...
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