ORLANDO - A BIOGRAPHY - Book review

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – A Biography was published in 1928 and has garnered praise and countless studies, and was n enormous success on publication. Sadly, this is one of very, very few books I have not finished, probably to my regret. Then again, not every book is for everyone.

I’ve read plenty of fantasy and science fiction so the idea that the young male Orlando can live for three centuries does not bother me, even if it was not explained how this occurred. The fact that he transformed from male to female is not an issue, though yet again it wasn’t explained. It’s not a real biography; it is fiction, so why explain anything?

This fake biography begins with Orlando aged sixteen in the late reign of Elizabeth I. ‘Orlando was a trifle clumsy’ and ‘naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone’ (p6).

I must confess I didn’t particularly like Orlando or even found him/her endearing. This may be the fault of the ‘biographer’ or reflects my own shortcomings.

I read about a third of the book and I liked the style, the humour and many of the observations I encountered. There are elements of stream of consciousness writing, and even magic realism. Which might explain the long unwieldy paragraphs, often over two pages in length. ‘Nature, who has so much to answer for besides the perhaps unwieldy length of this sentence...’ – there’s no ‘perhaps’ about it when the sentence extends to 22 lines! (p46).

Woolf’s descriptions are good, which is only to be expected.

‘...he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them’ (p4).

When Orlando realises that he has been deceived by his lover, he is sorely affected. ‘He was bitten by a swarm of snakes, each more poisonous than the last’ (35). Anyone who has lost a love or been deceived by a loved one will doubtless sympathise here.

Inevitably, perhaps, there are some insights into writing. ‘the words coming on the pants of his breath with the passion of a poet whose poetry is half pressed out of him by pain’ (p25).

Later, he seeks solace in reading books. ‘The disease gained rapidly upon him now in his solitude. He would read often six hours into the night’ which pains him as he so wanted to write – ‘He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous; yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a well-turned line... He has passed through the gates of Death and known the flames of Hell’ (pp44/45). Again, many a writer will know this feeling. Though these days the ‘disease’ is doubtless the scrolling of the smart-phone...

‘Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair...’ (p49). [There are eleven lines in this sentence, courtesy of several semi-colons].

‘Of the nature of poetry itself Orlando only gathered that it was harder to sell than prose, and though the lines were shorter took longer in the writing’ (p52). True, indeed, for many writers.

Orlando’s biography ends with him in 1928, the date of the book’s publication. Presumably, a long-lived and loved life, then!

Editorial comment:

‘...and a crowd of little ragamuffins such as always haunt the outskirts of a crowd...’ (p31). Why use ‘crowd’ twice in the same sentence?

‘...where the gold and silver plate was stood’ (p50). Why insert ‘was’?

‘...poured himself out another glass of wine’ (p53). Why insert ‘out’?

Orgulous (p25) – a lovely word, meaning ‘haughty’.