Virginia Woolf books

  Vanessa and Her Sister: A Novel by Priya Parmar.               Ballantine Books, 2014.




The four Stephen siblings live in London in 1905. This thoughtful novel continues through most of 1912. While the Bloomsbury Group takes form, one brother dies while the others develop new lives as well as new ideas. In the form of Vanessa's diary and short post cards to and from each other and family, the author paints an indepth (if fictional) picture of loves and  betrayals. Eccentric  sister Virginia (later Woolf) writes while Vanessa mainly paints. Vanessa eventually marries and has children, but never escapes her caretaker role in the family. At the end of the book, readers learn what happened to each of the characters in real life. Much like Downton Abbey, the preWar years in England are shown through fascinating characters. Of course, the ones in this novel are based on real people!


Adeline: A Novel of Virginia Woolf by Norah Vincent.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.


This complex book begins much later in Virginia Woolf's life, in June of 1925, and continues through her death in 1941. She is married to Leonard Woolf. When she was born, her first name was Adeline and this character now serves as a companion girl to the adult Virginia Woolf in the novel. While this could be confusing, it certainly brings readers directly into the brilliant, complicated, and sometimes fragile mind of Virginia Woolf. Other characters include Leonard, the T.S. Eliots, Lytton Strachey and others of the Bloomsbury Group, but this is truly Virginia's own story. I thought it was helpful to read the first novel (above) before this one, but this Vincent work still sent me to read the real facts about Woolf, her family, and her circle.