Review: Orlando

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Cass recently mentioned that she’s a little intimidated of Virginia Woolf, hence the reason that she hasn’t attempted Orlando. I’m fascinated by this, because I don’t get intimidated by writers. This is not to say that I am some kind of fearless reader, laughing in the face of Dovstkhey and Namakov. No, this is because I simply don’t know any better. While growing up in a pop culture-free bubble has its disadvantages (“TV shows come on every week?” I exclaimed, at the age of fifteen), it also has its advantages; namely, I usually find out an author is considered difficult after we’ve frolicked on some literary shores together. (That is, by the way, exactly what reading The Three Musketeers feels like. Albeit with more cannons.) So, in my usual state of oblivious serenity, I picked up Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.

The Literary Horizon: To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The Literary Horizon: Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, Orlando

Today’s selections are really only related because they’re classics and briefly touch upon Shakespeare or Shakespearean England. That’s all I got; it’s the holidays, folks, I’m probably still asleep right now.

Review: Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I was eleven when the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours came out in 2002. Somehow, I ended up watching it—I vaguely remember air travel being involved. Y’all know how bad my memory is. My main impression of Mrs. Dalloway came from that film, to the point that I stupidly thought it was set a little later than it is and, most alarmingly, that Mrs. Dalloway commits suicide at the end. (She does not.) Casting around for some non-speculative fiction to maintain variety in my reading diet, I found a copy at my local library and brought it home.

The Literary Horizon: Mrs. Dallaway, The Hours

I often feel as though contemporary fiction gets the shaft here at The Literary Omnivore; while I do read it, it just rarely appeals to me as a setting—while I’ll pick up a book for being set in, say, pre-war China, I’ll rarely do the same for a more contemporary setting. So today we’re going to look at two contemporary (ish!) novels, both of which have something to do with a one Virginia Woolf.