The White Garden - Stephanie Barron

The White Garden is a book I have had on my shelf for a while - I have made an attempt on getting through it before but failed miserably. I did make it to the end on this reading but I can't say that it left me satisfied unfortunately.
Virginia Woolf is one of my favourite authors and as such I will devour almost anything that has a slight reference to her. A couple of years ago I read Vanessa and Virginia, a fictional account of the relationship between Virginia and her sister, and absolutely loved it - I only wish The White Garden could have been more like this interpretation of Woolf's world.
The White Garden is set in modern day when an American garden designer, Jo Bellamy, travels to the UK to examine the White Garden created by Woolf's friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West at her family home, Sissinghurst Castle. The premise is that Jo is to gain inspiration from the White Garden in order to be able to replicate the design for a wealthy client when she returns home (I found the romantic sub-plot between Jo and this client to be absolutely ludicrous). Jo has an ulterior motive for her trip - she is wanting to learn more about her recently deceased grandfather who grew up in the area around Sissinghurst Castle before emigrating to the USA after World War 2. From these bones of plot the connection to the life of Virginia Woolf is made whereby the author has imagined a different ending for Woolf and a mystery surrounding her death - that of course involves Jo's grandfather in some way.
I do not consider myself a literary purist at all - I don't have a problem with modern day writers taking a fictional idea and applying it to the life of a well know figure or event - some of the best books I have read have been written in this way - I only ask that they write them well! I think my main problem with this book was that I found it to be a little tacky - the storyline created by the author just didn't seem to ring true in any way - it was not believable for me at all. As I said previously, I did make it to the end of The White Garden but not out of any connection to the story or the characters - I think I just wanted to have it over and done with!

The Hours - Michael Cunningham

Just when I thought a book would never come along to topple Mrs Dalloway off it's perch for me I find The Hours. I know it is probably sacrilegious to list an emulation of a Woolf classic as higher than the classic itself - but I did fall completely in love with Cunningham's writing, his version of the story and his amazing creative talent in bringing the stories and character's together.

Cunningham takes Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and creates a modern interpretation of the novel by telling the stories of three female characters; Clarissa who lives in 1990's New York is in the midst of planning for a party to take place at her apartment that night, Laura Brown a young housewife and mother suffocating in the existence of 1940's suburban Los Angeles and Virginia Woolf herself, also living in the suburbs ,as a tonic for her health, and who is in the process of writing Mrs Dalloway.

Each chapter of the book is told from the perspective of each character in her own voice - and the voices are clear and distinct and yet in many ways containing a similar essence. The women are separated by time and place and yet they share common dreams and pains - the desire to be free, to be loved for who they are and to make their own choices. Cunningham uses simple, every day tasks and events to illustrate the inner worlds of the characters. I thought some of the most effective and painful parts of the narrative were the scenes where Laura is going through the process of making a cake for her husband's Birthday party;

Still she had hoped to create something finer, something more significant, than what she's produced, even with its smooth surface and its centered message. She wants (she admits to herself) a dream of a cake manifested as an actual cake; a cake invested with an undeniable and profound sense of comfort, of bounty. She wants to have baked a cake that banishes sorrow, even if only for a little while. She wants to have produced something marvelous; something that would be marvelous even to those who do not love her.

She has failed. She wishes she didn't mind. Something, she thinks, is wrong with her.

I felt such connection with these characters, Laura in particular even though she is probably the one I have the least in common with in life (apart from her desire to just escape her life for a while and read her beloved book in bed!).

I was so sad when this book ended - partly because of the pain it had touched on in each of the characters but mostly because I just wanted to keep reading more about them. I am definitely glad that I waited to read The Hours until after I had read Mrs Dalloway - the book would stand alone perfectly but it has so much more meaning for being able to connect it to Woolf's writing. I will be reading this one again, and again and possibly even again.

Vanessa & Virginia - Susan Sellers

Following on from the Woolf In Winter Read Along I am keen to keep reading Woolf's novels and any other Woolf related fiction, biography etc.. That's why I jumped at the chance to read the latest selection from The Not The TV Book Group's reading schedule - Vanessa & Virginia being discussed this weekend over at Other Stories.

Vanessa & Virginia is a fictional account of the lives of the sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf and it captures the period from their childhood up until adulthood and Virginia's death. I think having a vague understanding of knowledge of the background to the sister's lives was helpful in reading and enjoying this book but certainly not essential. I think the author has created a beautiful stand alone story of the lives of two sisters - loving companions but also rivals in their creative and personal lives. The fact that the story focuses on two such famous and interesting people is a bonus for me!

Susan Sellers' writing style and descriptions are divine - from the beginning of the story I was hooked and I had entered the world of the characters completely. I find this an amazing skill that some writers have - to make me care about what is happening within the story - to care about the outcome. I thought it was particularly clever in this situation when the story and the lives of the characters are so well known to many.

I could open any page of this novel and quote a beautiful, lyrical passage - I found the way the author paralleled her writing style with the creative pursuits of Vanessa and Virginia wonderful;

The frame of a window, blue paint blistering in the Mediterranean sun. I am arrested, dazzled by colour, the cascading searlet of a pot of hibiscus, the glaring whitewash of a wall. It is as if the colours, first separately, then collectively, strike a series of notes that sets up a resonating chord in me. I am impelled to paint it.

An amazing book in both content and structure and one that has only made me want to continue my Woolf reading even further.

The Waves - Virginia Woolf

The Waves was the fourth and final read for The Woolf In Winter Read Along and I have to say that I am glad it was not the first book chosen! I definitely found this book the most difficult of the four to read and while I found many elements within it that I loved, overall I would have to say it was my least favourite read of them all. The discussion for this book is being hosted by Claire.

The Waves follows the lives of six friends as they move from childhood into adulthood, middle age and old age. I loved the way that Woolf structured the book with each section of the book starting with a passage describing the movement of the sun - with the inference that the movement of the sun has direct parallels with the lives of the characters. I found these 'sun' passages grounding for me as a reader in terms of where the prose was heading next - without these passages I might have been even more lost at times! In the introduction to my copy of the book these passages are also likened to Claude Monet's impressionist paintings - I found this interesting as Monet is my favourite artist and it gave me another reason for why these sections of the book resonated with me so well.

Whilst I did find the book challenging to read there were elements through it that I did connect with - the feelings and thoughts of the characters as they moved through the different phases and stages of their lives - the reference to symbolic and actual life cycle events and milestones. One of my favourite scenes was where one of the female characters, Jinny was preparing to go to a party as a young woman;

'Now, too, the time is coming when we shall leave school and wear long skirts. I shall wear necklaces and a white dress without sleeves at night. There will be parties in brilliant rooms; and one man will single me out and will tell me what he has told no other person. He will like me better than Susan or Rhoda. He will find in me some quality, some peculiar thing. But I shall not let myself be attached to one person only. I do not want to be fixed, to be pinioned. I tremble, I quiver, like the leaf in the hedge, as I sit dangling my feet, on the edge of the bed, with a new day to break open. I have fifty years, I have sixty years to spend. I have not yet broken into my hoard. This is the beginning.

I could really relate to this paragraph - Jinny being so excited that this new part of her life if beginning and all the hopes and dreams she carries with her for the future. Jinny's reflections at this time are contrasted beautifully with Rhoda's who feels more apprehension and uncertainty about where she is at this moment in time;

I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uppermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.

The relationships between the characters and how these change and develop over time is another focus of the book that I enjoyed. I particularly loved this reflection from Louis;

To be loved by Susan would be to be impaled by a bird's sharp beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door. Yet there are moments when I could wish to be speared by a beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door, positively, once and for all.

I loved this reflection for what it says about the relationships we often become involved in - they might not always be the best for us but we seek them anyway!

I think The Waves is a book that I will have to go back to at some stage once I have continued my Woolf reading. I plan to move on now to reading more about Woolf herself in the hope that it will help me to love her writing even more. A huge thank you to Sarah, Emily, Frances and Claire for organising the Read Along and for introducing me to one of my new favourite authors.

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

Orlando was the third read for the Woolf In Winter Read Along with this particular read being hosted by Frances at Nonsuch Book.

Woolf has described Orlando as a "Writer's Holiday" for herself and I felt it was also a sort of "reader's holiday" for me in terms of my Woolf reading. Not that I haven't totally loved and enjoyed my earlier reads but the intense focus on her characters inner lives and thoughts is draining to read - enlightening and amazing, but draining as well. I found Orlando to be an extremely entertaining read - a great story and a fascinating character to follow.

I feel this is another Woolf book where it really would have helped my appreciation of the novel to have a deeper and fuller understanding of Woolf's life and in particular her relationship with Vita Sackville-West, for whom Orlando was written. Overall though that lack of knowledge did not impede me from loving the story - and especially the freedom with which it was written.

Orlando starts life as a young boy in sixteenth-century England and moves through the ages to end up being a woman writer in 1928. The whole concept sounds so fantastical but Woolf makes it work. Before starting the book I was eager to read how Woolf would create this transformation in gender and I really liked the scene where this occurred:

We are, therefore, now left entirely alone in the room with the sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters. The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast -

'THE TRUTH!'

at which Orlando woke.

He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess - he was a woman.

Woolf goes on to write:

Orlando had become a woman - there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity.

For me this is one of the most important paragraphs of the novel - the premise that sex or gender is in many ways irrelevant to a person's identity and character. Quite a powerful concept for the time in which Woolf is writing.

I loved Orlando as I have loved my earlier Woolf reads but I particuarly enjoyed the slight break from the intensity that Orlando delivered - I'm ready for The Waves now!

Woolf Love

Deciding to participate in the Woolf In Winter Read Along has opened up a whole new literary crush for me. I never thought I would connect with Virginia Woolf's work as much as I have and I must admit (as you can see above) my book buying restricting policy has taken a bit of a beating of late thanks to my new found obsession!

I am currently reading (and loving) Orlando and will then move on to The Waves as part of the Read Along but after that I have these Woolf books or Woolf related reading to move on to:

A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf - I have heard so much about this one and even though it is only the smallest of books I have never picked it up before.

Selected Diaries - Virginia Woolf - A lot of the books of Woolf's I have been reading make reference to her diaries and letters and I am thinking they will shed more light on her writing process and the aspects of her life that contributed to and influenced her work. Also, I love the covers of these Vintage editions.

The White Garden - Stephanie Barron - I first read about this one over at Nonsuch Book and thought it sounded like an interesting read - but it was the Woolf link that clinched it for me.

Vanessa & Virginia - Susan Sellers - The reading of this one will enable me to take place in the Not The TV Book Group discussions which I am looking forward to.

A Writer's Diary - Virginia Woolf - I actually bought this one after hearing Susan Hill rave about it in Howard's End Is On The Landing.

Have you got any other recommendations I should add to my collection?

To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse is the second Virginia Woolf book I have read as part of The Woolf in Winter Read Along (the discussion for this particular book being hosted by Emily) and it has created a little bit of a dilemma for me as I now don't know whether this one or Mrs Dalloway is my favourite! A nice dilemma to be in really!

I am actually a little blown away by how much I have enjoyed Woolf's writing - I can't get enough of it! A part of me is disappointed in myself that I have never tried to read any of her work before this, but another part of me thinks I have come across her books at just the right time in my reading life.

To The Lighthouse has been described as one of Woolf's most autobiographical novels - a homage to her deceased parents. In the introduction (which I read after reading the novel) to the edition of the book that I read Woolf is quoted as saying that;

I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer hear her voice, I do not see her. I suppose that I did for myself what psychoanalysts do for their patients. I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it I explained it and then laid it to rest.

As a counsellor and mental health professional I found this very interesting and the writer of the introduction goes on to talk about the writing of the book as being a narrative kind of therapy for Woolf - which is exactly the type of therapy I use with my clients who are seeing me for issues relating to grief and loss. The creation of your own story, or narrative, is a way for people to recognise and validate the losses in their lives from their own perspective.

In To The Lighthouse Woolf has created the characters of Mrs and Mr Ramsey to correspond with her parents and through the novel we see how their partnership as husband and wife has developed and how they relate to each other and their children in the context of their summer house in Scotland and surrounded by various friends and acquaintances. The novel starts with Mrs and Mr Ramsey talking with their youngest child, James, about a possible trip out to the Island's lighthouse the next day;

'Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow,' said Mrs Ramsey. 'But you'll have to be up with the lark,' she added.

To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's darkness and a day's sail, within touch.

I love this opening scene - I remember as a child looking forward to something so much and being told by my parents "we'll see" in response to whether it would happen or not - and to a child "we'll see" always seems to mean "yes"! Of course Mr Ramsey puts a darkness over the scene by declaring that it won't be fine tomorrow so don't get your hopes up -and in this simple scene we clearly see the personalities of each parent and how they are perceived by their child.

The most interesting parts of the novel for me were those that focused on relationships and connections between people and objects. The relationships between Mrs and Mr Ramsey and their children in explored in many different ways and across time - we see the relationships not necessarily change but be expressed from different perspectives.

The novel is told in three section and I found the middle section - Time Passes - extremely sad and mournful (as I am sure it is meant to be). Each section is clearly distinct from the other and yet they blend together wonderfully to create the whole story.

I know there is so much more I could be writing about and reflecting on but I feel as a new reader to Woolf I still have much to learn - not only about her writing but also about her life as I feel that will inform and accompany my reading of her work beautifully. So, with that said - does anyone have any good recommendations for further reading about Woolf herself?

Looking forward to our next Woolf read...

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway is my very first Virginia Woolf read and I read it as part of The Woolf in Winter (or Summer as the case is for me!) Read Along. You can see other comments and posts about this book being collected by Sarah here.

This being my first venture into Woolf territory I must admit I wasn't really sure what to expect. Although I know a lot about Woolf's life I am ashamed to say that I didn't really know all that much about her actual writing. I am now VERY glad I have rectified that as based on what I have read in Mrs Dalloway I think Woolf will turn out to be one of my favourite authors.

The "stream of consciousness" writing style that Woolf adopts in this book took me by surprise - I felt captured by the characters thoughts and feelings and I found myself rushing along in my reading - I felt I was reading too fast to really appreciate the writing itself but I certainly didn't feel as though I was missing the essence of the story. I think this is the type of book that will need to be read again and again, each time concentrating on a different aspect.

I loved the setting of London in the 1920's - descriptions of the city streets detailing a world possibly about to slip from existence;

Gliding down Piccadilly, the car turned down St James's Street. Tall men, men of robust physique, well-dressed men with their tail-coats and their white slips and their hair raked back who, for reasons difficult to discriminate, were standing in the bow window of White's with their hands behind the tails of their coats, looking out, perceived instinctively that greatness was passing, and the pale light of the immortal presence fell upon them as it had fallen upon Clarissa Dalloway.

Clarissa, Mrs Dalloway, is preparing for a formal party that she will host at her home that evening and in the course of the day we see her reflect on her youth and her past and prepare for her current and future life. In contrast to Clarissa there is the character of Septimus Warren Smith - a returned soldier suffering the effects of post traumatic stress (or shell shock as it was described as then). The way Woolf overlaps these two seemingly very different characters and their worlds is very clever and effecting.

My edition of the book contained a quite lengthy introduction which I went back and read after I had read the book - I was glad that I saved it until the end as it would have given away so much about the story but it has also helped my reflections on my reading in giving me more insight into Woolf's personal life at the time she was writing Mrs Dalloway and the process she went through in completing the book.

I think I am possibly a little overwhelmed by the power of Woolf's writing to say much more about Mrs Dalloway itself at the moment except that it will be a book I go back to - and I can't wait to read more Woolf!

2010 - Another Wonderful Year of Books!

Happy New Year Everyone! Despite us being in the middle of summer in Australia the sun has not shone since Christmas Day in my part of the world - still warm and muggy - just continual rain and no light!! This would normally drive me crazy but I am actually feeling quite calm and content - a new year is starting and there are plenty of books to devour.

I am not really a resolution kind of person - I don't do so well with "shoulds" - if I feel like I have to do something then odds on it won't get done! So instead I have thought of some reading plans to guide me through 2010:

1. To Read & Re-read Charles Dickens - 2009 saw me renew (or begin) an interest in the work and life of Charles Dickens and I have decided that I would like to spend a portion of my reading year in 2010 re-reading his books in some cases and discovering them for the first time in others.

2. Finally read A Suitable Boy - I have been meaning to read this book for the past two years now and for some reason it has always been pushed to the end of the reading pile - not this year though! I have already started the book once before and was falling in love with it so I know I will jump into is easily - I just need to devote the time to it that it deserves. Which leads me to my next reading plan...

3. Read Slowly - Taking a leaf out of the slow movement as a whole slow reading is about taking time with reading - to really absorb the book that is in front of you at the time. I use reading not only as a form of entertainment and learning but also as a way to disconnect from my busy world and to relax - I'm not sure how I have actually been doing this when I have a million books (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration!) beside my bed - all with book marks in them at the one time! For 2010 I would like to take my time with my reading - only read one book at a time and really enjoy and appreciate that book - instead of thinking about what I will be reading next.

4. To Read (and Use) More Cookbooks - I am no cook - anyone who has ever had to eat one of my creations can tell you that! But I would like to learn some simple recipes and despite my poor kitchen skills I do love cook books!

5. Only Join in Challenges/Read Alongs that I Truly Want To - This might sound obvious but I think in the past I have jumped into challenges way too quickly - I love being a part of the book blogging community and I thought to not join in a challenge was rude! For 2010 I will think about the challenge before jumping in. So far the only challenge I have thought about joining is the Art History Reading Challenge and I am also a part of the Woolf in Winter Read Along and this is how I started 2010...