Adeline
A Novel of Virginia Woolf
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A “skillfully rendered and emotionally insightful” reimagining of the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf’s last years (Publishers Weekly).
In 1925, she began writing To the Lighthouse, an epic piece of prose that instantly became a beloved classic. In 1941, she walked into the River Ouse, never to be heard from again. What happened in between those two moments is a story to be told, one of insight and camaraderie, loneliness and loss—the story of a woman, named Adeline at birth, heading toward an inexorable demise.
With poetic precision and psychological acuity, Norah Vincent paints an intimate portrait of what might have happened in those last years of Virginia Woolf’s life. From her friendships with the so-called Bloomsbury Group, which included the likes of T. S. Eliot, to her struggles with her husband, Leonard, Vincent explores the intimate conversations, tormented confessions, and internal struggles Woolf may have faced.
Praised by USA Today as “daring” and by the New Statesman as “electrifyingly good,” Adeline takes a keen look at one of the most beloved, mourned, and mysterious literary giants of all time.
“Vincent is a sensitive recorder of a mind’s movements as it shifts in and out of inspiration, and as it fights before submitting to despair.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Skillfully rendered and emotionally insightful.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It is perhaps not surprising that Vincent (Self-Made Man), whose nonfiction has dealt with issues of gender and mental illness, should choose as the topic of this novel the life and death of Virginia Woolf. Specifically, the novel focuses on a handful of scenes from the last 15 years of Woolf's life, exploring not only Woolf's complicated relationship with her own creative process but also the intricate and fraught entanglements of the Bloomsbury Group. Central to Vincent's imagined version of Woolf's later years are the consequences of the author's troubled childhood and its implications for her close relationships, including her sister, Vanessa. Here, much of Woolf's depression and anxiety is linked to her childhood self and her given name, Adeline with whom Woolf has a pivotal imaginary conversation that haunts her to the end. This exchange is skillfully rendered and emotionally insightful, leading Vincent's novel to its somber conclusion.
