Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Blurb (on back of book): “Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”
As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate sixteen-year-old nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colorful delights of Queen Elizabeth I’s court. By the close, three centuries have passed, and he will have transformed into a thirty-six-year-old woman in the year 1928. Orlando’s journey is also an internal one—he is an impulsive poet who learns patience in matter of the heart, and a woman who knows what it is to be a man.
Virginia Woolf’s most unusual creation, Orlando is a fantastical biography as well as a funny, exuberant romp through history that examines the true nature of sexuality.
MY OPINION: **
I read this book for my AP Lit class. It was not a required reading but instead part of little book groups, so we never had any full-class discussions on this one. I personally was not a fan (see my old current thoughts below).
This book was the biggest struggle to get through that I've ever experienced. Each page felt very torturous to me. It had virtually no dialogue and every single page was a block of text full of the most difficult and confusing words and sentence structure. I honestly understood about 40% of the book, if we're being quite honest. Finding the main themes was a struggle. Figuring out where we were and what was going on was a struggle. Turning the page was a struggle.
I am aware that this is definitely not the Virginia Woolf I should have started out with. For that reason, I am not going to entirely avoid Woolf's work and plan to read some of her more famous pieces just to see what she's really all about. This one is apparently the most abstract and random and is not the best one to introduce me to her style of writing.
The language is beautiful. I am definitely not denying that fact. I found all of it to be particularly poignant and wonderfully-written but at times, it was just SO dense. I struggled to get through the long sentences that lasted half the entire page. I have never been a fan of long descriptions and while I've grown more accustomed to them as I read more classics, this one just felt like overkill. The descriptions didn't even make sense on top of that, digressing into the most random of topics that definitely had some symbolic meaning that I didn't have time to fully analyze as I was meant to finish this book in two weeks.
As a prospective history major (crossing my fingers), I really enjoyed reading about all the different time periods this book covers. For those of you who don't know, the book starts out with Orlando (as a man) in the Elizabethan era and ends up with Orlando (as a woman) in 1928 just prior to the Great Depression. I liked seeing how each part of Orlando's journey fit into the historical backdrop, especially since I have a fair amount of knowledge in the core events of each time period.
There were many "WTF" scenes. I read this book in a group and we constantly were sharing quotes and asking ourselves WTF is going on??? There are scenes that felt so abstract and confusing and I obviously am aware that it had some special significance but I honestly just wasn't feeling it. Orlando's relationships with the people around her were of particular confusion because she seemed to go through phases and meet the most strange people whose characters didn't make sense.
The book explores self-identity, the ambiguity of time, and the subjectivity of character. It also highlights the importance of writing as a common thread between each vastly different time period, which I personally loved. The book doesn't follow any clear cut pattern which I think was how it was supposed to be. Woolf covers the confusing journey of life in a confusing way, emphasizing that complexity in a way that was sometimes too complex for me to understand.
Woolf wrote this book as a sort of personal letter to one of her good friends, I believe, and for that reason, I personally don't know why it was published. It felt like it was meant to be read by one person who would understand what was going on and instead it was introduced to the poor confused public eye who doesn't know a single thing that is going on.
I'm not even going to comment on the whole gender-switching situation because I honestly don't know what that was or why it was necessary but I guess it was a commentary on how subjective literature is?? I'm not entirely positive, if we're being quite honest.
I don't really have anything else to add to this review, if we're being honest. I personally wasn't a fan but I would definitely not say it was a bad book by any means. I just lean more towards the Jane-Austen-Oscar-Wilde classics and not the Virginia-Woolf it seems.
Maybe I'll reread this one in a few years (or take a class in college in which I am required to read some Woolf). However, as a high school senior, this personally wasn't my cup of tea. I would recommend it to readers looking for a poetic and intriguing novel.
Main Character: Orlando
Sidekick(s): Friends?
Villain(s): Time, misunderstandings, etc
Classics Elements: This book features classic prose and themes.
******************************
current thoughts at the time of finishing:
-i struggled to rate this book almost as much as i struggled to read this book
-what. happened.
-this was like. the most complex book. and yet the most complex parts. were stated in the most simple ways.
-someone make it make sense.
-wild goose chase???
-marriage, aging a century, giving birth all in the span of 1 sentence..
-imagine if we could all just magically sleep for 7 days and switch genders?!
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