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    Vanessa and Her Sister
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    Vanessa and Her Sister
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    Vanessa and Her Sister
    Ebook407 pages4 hours

    Vanessa and Her Sister

    By Priya Parmar

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    'Prepare to be dazzled' Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
    'One of the essential reads of the year' The Times

    London, 1905. The city is alight with change and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of brilliant, artistic friends who will come to be known as the legendary Bloomsbury Group. And at the centre of the charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter and Virginia, the writer.

    Each member of the group will go on to earn fame and success, but so far Vanessa Bell has never sold a painting. Virginia Woolf's book review has just been turned down by The Times. Lytton Strachey has not published anything. E. M. Forster has finished his first novel but does not like the title. Leonard Woolf is still a civil servant in Ceylon, and John Maynard Keynes is looking for a job. Together, this sparkling coterie of artists and intellectuals throw away convention and embrace the wild freedom of being young, single bohemians in London.

    But the landscape shifts when Vanessa unexpectedly falls in love and her sister feels dangerously abandoned. Eerily possessive, charismatic, manipulative and brilliant, Virginia has always lived in the shelter of Vanessa's constant attention and encouragement. Without it, she careens toward self-destruction and madness. As tragedy and betrayal threaten to destroy the family, Vanessa must choose whether to protect Virginia's happiness or her own.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateDec 30, 2014
    ISBN9781408850220
    Unavailable
    Vanessa and Her Sister
    Author

    Priya Parmar

    Priya Parmar is the author of one previous novel, Exit the Actress. She lives in London and Hawaii. priyaparmar.com

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    Reviews for Vanessa and Her Sister

    4/5

    190 ratings71 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Excellent novel fictionalizing the Bloomsbury Group, focusing on the life of Vanessa Stephen Bell and her sister in particular. I loved that Vanessa and her art were given center stage and Virginia was given a supporting role. I'm not a big of fan of Woolf, so it was nice to see things told from a different perspective and in such a brilliant way. Well done!
    • 4/5
      My rating is based on the brilliance of the writing and storytelling vs. my engagement with the characters. Anyone enamored of the Bloomsbury Group and/or literary historical fiction will love this book. Written as a series of (fictional) diary entries by Vanessa Stephen Bell interspersed with letters, cables, and facsimiles of travel tickets from her sister Virginia Stephen Woolf and other members of their circle, we get an intimate glimpse into the early evolution of the Bloomsbury Group from 1905 through 1912. My rating is totally due to my indifference to the characters. I've only read a few novels from the writers in this group and have no background in their artistic oeuvre. I started and ended with a mild curiosity about these writers and artists, but never formed any passion for them. I had known Virginia was troubled, but she comes off schizophrenic and a little sociopathic in this story. As a group, they seemed to lead insulated privileged lives totally dedicated to their own passions (sex and art in all its forms) and disengaged from any larger social movements or class struggle which seethed at the the time--not my kind of people. In spite of my indifference to the characters, I give Parmar full marks for craft. She built her book beautiful sentence by beautiful sentence, layering her work like the artists of this period layered paint to give us a stunning impressionistic novel. I received an Advanced Reading Copy of this book from the publisher, but that did not influence my review.
    • 4/5
      What a delightful find! If you enjoy reading titles by or about the Bloomsbury group, this book is for you. The author creates a fictional diary of letters and notes, detailing a period of Vanessa and Virginia's lives. She truly captured the unique qualities of her characters in short anecdotes colored with faux postcards, train tickets, and more. The perfect book to settle down with under a tree or in your favorite reading chair.
    • 5/5
      I’ve of course heard of Virginia Woolf, but knew little of her. This book whet my interest in her novels and I hope to read Mrs. Dolloway. I was very interested in the main character, her sister Vanessa Bell, the painter. I like how Parmar explained in the interview at the end of the book what she’d imagined and what was true in the novel.The author brought her characters alive. I am a very satisfied reader, feeling that I’ve enlightened myself.
    • 5/5
      This is a really wonderful novel of the early years of the Bloomsbury Group. They'll go on to be the writer Virginia Woolf, the artist Vanessa Bell, the novelist E. M. Forster, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and other memorable figures, but right now, they are simply the Stephen siblings (Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian) and their friends. The Stephens have taken a house in avant-garde Bloomsbury, and begin hosting daring literary and artistic salons. It's glittering and edgy, optimistic and ambitious, though as yet none of them has achieved much.

      Then Thoby dies, and Vanessa, the main anchor for brilliant and unstable Virginia, marries art critic Clive Bell. Virginia feels abandoned, and sets out to get Vanessa's constant attention back.

      The story is told through Vanessa's diary, and letters and postcards from and between other characters. I expected to find this novel mildly interesting; instead I found it absolutely compelling. Parmar makes these artistic and intellectual notables utterly fascinating even when they are at their least likable. As just one example, both the growth of the relationship between Clive and Vanessa, and its erosion and breakdown make perfect and painful sense.

      Vanessa and Her Sister is an absorbing and enlightening look at the early years of a groundbreaking artistic and intellectual movement in the first years of the 2oth century. Start reading, and you won't put it down.

      Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Vanessa and her Sister. Priya Parmar. 2014. I know very little about the Bloomsbury Group and gave never really studied any of the authors who are included in the group so this novel written in the form of diary entries by Vanessa Bell and letters from various members of the group intrigued me. Good grief! What a collection of characters! Other than Vanessa and her marriage to Clive Bell, most of the entries were about Virginia Woolf. This is an excellent introduction to this artsy group whose members took pride in their literary and artistic endeavors, supported each other and certainly slept with each other!
    • 5/5
      This is historical fiction at it's finest. I have not anything about Viriginia Woolf's older sister Vanessa. This book is an account of her early life and relationship with her sister. The story is not only about her, but also about the infamous Bloomsbury Group. I found the story to be fascinating and it flowed extremely well and it was interesting to see the literary and artistic legends come alive on the pages. If you are a historical fiction fan, this is a great read!I was originally supposed to receive an advance readers copy from the publisher from Library Thing. Although I never received my copy, I am glad I was able to obtain a copy from my local library.
    • 3/5
      Admittedly, this is not my usual genre. The book is a first person diary of sorts based on actual historical writings of non-fictional characters. These are persons of means, free to do as they please, free of the burden of work and financial obligation, and follows the expected track of romance and family interactions. Well written, it does maintain reader interest.This book was received in electronic format from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      Thank you to Random House, the publisher, for providing me an Advanced Reader's Copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. I knew of Virginia Woolf and wanted to know more about her sister, Vanessa Bell, the painter. I was delighted to get the opportunity to do just that by reading this book. It started slowly for me but I continued on and am happy that I did because it builds and you find yourself engrossed. It's about the Bloomsbury Group, a group of writers, artists, art critics, and scholars in England during the very early 1900s. Vanessa, Virginia and their brothers hosted this group weekly.The book follows both sisters, their family relationships, and their painting and writing careers. It has an unusual format consisting of journal/diary entries, telegrams, postcards and letters. There is a list of characters and who they are in the front of the book which helps since there are a lot of characters to keep track of. Excellent read.
    • 3/5
      I had a difficult time getting into this book. Maybe I was put off by the style and the structure (letters, telegrams, diary snippets); or maybe I've read too many good books about the Bloomsbury Group and Virginia Woolf. Whatever the reason, I found this novel dull and dry and most of the characters fairly one-dimensional. I got the sense that the author's "cleverness" in using this structure and in depicting Virginia as a selfish, self-absorbed person wholly unworthy of empathy took precedence over writing a truly engaging novel.
    • 4/5
      I’m wary of novels written about real people whose lives are in living memory; because I think it’s too easy for the line between fact and fiction to be blurred. But I found so many reasons to pick up this book. It has such a lovely cover, it’s set in a milieu that I love, it’s a story of sisters, and it’s a story that places the lesser known of two celebrated sisters at the centre of the stage.The two sisters are artist Vanessa Bell and writer Virginia Woolf, and this is Vanessa’s story. It’s written as a journal; a fictional journal inspired by her own correspondence and by the writings of many whose paths she crossed.The story begins in 1905. The mother of the Stephens family has been dead for some years, the father of the has died more recently, and their four children – Vanessa, Virginia, and their two brothers, Thoby and Adrian – have moved from the family home in Kensington to a more bohemian shared home in Bloomsbury.They are preparing for a party – a lovely nod to Mrs Dalloway – and as the book moves forwards there are so many thoughtful details lie that, details that will strike a chord for thoughtful, careful reader.There will be many parties, and neighbours will gossip about the gatherings at which mixed groups of unchaperoned young people drink and talk about about art and literature until the early hours of the morning.Some of their names, and the names of others who pass through this story will be familiar to many: Otteline Morrell, Maynard Keynes, Morgan (E M) Forster, Lytton Strachey ….Vanessa loves her unconventional new life, but, maybe because she is the eldest of the four, she becomes the responsible adult. She manages the housekeeping, she does the household accounts, and she does whatever she can to smooth her sister’s mood swings. There are references to a severe breakdown in the recent past, and it is clear that Vanessa is carefully stage managing family life to try to make sure that nothing like that will happen again.I could see much that was admirable in Vanessa’s actions, but I could also see cause for concern. Virginia became so accustomed to having her own way, however selfish and unreasonable that way sometimes was. And she maybe came to believe that she would always be at the centre of Vanessa’s world.That would become evident when Vanessa became a wife – to art critic Clive Bell – and then a mother.Parmar follows the lives and the relationships of these three people with keen understanding and with wonderful subtlety. Vanessa’s has doubts about Clive’s courtship, but her resistance softens, and she finds such joy in marriage and in motherhood. Clive though feels ousted, first by his wife’s pregnancy and then by the arrival of his son. Virginia’s desire to be the sole object of her sister’s attention is thwarted, and, though her behaviour may seem spoilt and selfish, it is clear that she is living of fear of being left alone, and of what her unstable mind might do.Years later she would write: “My affair with Clive and Nessa turned more of a knife in me than anything else has ever done”.The writing of Vanessa’s fictional journal is beautiful, and, though it tells a quiet story of lives being lived, there were moments when it caught real emotions so clearly, moments when words caught ideas so very well.That record is set against telegrams and postcards between other members of her social circle. That is very effective. The correspondence between Lytton Strachey and his friend Leonard Woolf, who was working for the civil service in Ceylon, was a delight and I could have happily read a whole book of it.Lytton was delighted when the friend who he thought would be the perfect match for his friend Virginia came home.“I have grown so accustomed to singing for you, like a siren beached up on a friendless rock. Whatever will I do with my time, now that I no longer need to lure you home?”And of course he was right!Not all of the correspondence was so successful, and it was a little disappointing to only have a glimpse of many fascinating characters, and that the story came to a conclusion rather too quickly.This book isn’t definitive, of course it isn’t, but I found the story of Vanessa’s emotional life, and of her progression towards a grown-up, independent future, wonderfully readable.I particularly liked that it presented so many people usually presented with a label – ‘writer’, ‘artist’, ‘socialite’, ‘critic’ – simply as young people who loved art, who loved literature, who loved Cornwall; who had hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions …..That, and its lightness of touch, say to me that this would be a lovely introduction for anyone who is a little scared of Virginia Woolf, or for anyone who is wondering who Vanessa Bell was. For me though, it was a lovely re-introduction …..
    • 4/5
      I was intrigued by the subject of Vanessa and her sister - the relationship between Vanessa Bell and her sister, Virginia Woolf. From the beginning I was captivated by language of the book. At first I found it hard to follow the rhythm of the story; the writing is really similar to Virginia Woolf's own stories. In the end I found it a really satisfying read. It is told through snippets of letters, postcards, notes, all intertwined with the story of Vanessa's relationship with her sister and their group of friends during the beginning of the 20th century.

      The story opens during the period in time when the four Stephen siblings are barely into adulthood and setting up house on their own. Their circle of friends were quite adventurous and modern for that period in time, and they gathered for philosophical and artistic discussions late into the night; quite a risqué practice for that era. As it progresses, the language of the story becomes less Victorian and more thoroughly modern. From the start, Virginia is portrayed as headstrong, vivacious and even unstable; it is not hard to see how/why her life ended as it did. According to the endnotes the book is based on a lot of the truth of Virginia and Vanessa's lives. It is a tale of love, betrayal, and life. One of my favorite moments comes later in the book as Vanessa realizes that through her life she thought she was waiting for her life to happen; all along she was waiting for her own self discovery.

    • 4/5
      hardcover 4 ★ Bell, Vanessa, 1879-1961 (artist) -----Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941 (writer) ....London England...Bloomsbury Group...biographical, historical fiction...siblings... V. Woolf was among the founders of the Modernist movement in English literature. The effects of bi-polar disorder, at times caused Woolf extended periods of withdrawal, unable to focus long enough to read or write. At times, she convalesced in nursing facilities , calling herself ‘mad’ and saying she heard voices and had visions. “My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery—always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving...." ( V Woolf) Until 1895, summers in St. Ives, County Cornwall carried fond memories. However, when Virginia was thirteen years old, her mother died and she experienced her first major breakdown. There are other depressive periods but a severe break also occurs when Vanessa falls in love. " Eerily possessive, charismatic, manipulative, and brilliant, Virginia has always lived in the shelter of Vanessa’s constant attention and encouragement. Without it, she careens toward self-destruction and madness." (publisher note) Parmar is quite descriptive in introducing and following the British " Bloomsbury Group", bohemian and unconventional to say the least. As the plot unfolds, we find concise and vivid portrayals of several relationships and the group's avant-garde lifestyle. Although I stumbled a bit in the reading, I felt the intensity of her story telling. For me 4 ★
    • 1/5
      I could not get into this book. I have no knowledge of these people from long ago nor do I care tolearn more. I often like epistolary novels but this one was just very boring. Although all the characterswent on to be recognized creative people,I found them flighty and boring.This was a free,early reviewer book. Sorry. You can't love them all!
    • 3/5
      I received this book from LibraryThings early reviewers. I was not familiar with the Bloomsbury group except that they were a group of English creative's in the early 1900's. I enjoy art, literature and history so this book intrigued me. I also knew of Virginia Woolf so was hoping to learn more. The journal style was helpful in keeping track of where and when although some have criticized this approach while adding dialog but this did not bother me. It is not a fast paced book nor is it one that made me want to hurry to get back to but when I would sit down to read I would get caught up in it. I think Vanessa's life was just getting good when the book ended which was a disappointment to me. I did appreciate that the author added "What Happened to the rest of them" to the end. That helped feel like I learned a bit more than what was in the story. Over all it was worth the read but I was anxious to get on to a new book.
    • 5/5
      Vanessa Bell keeps a diary just like most of the other members of the celebrated and notorious Bloomsbury Group. This is the premise of a very imaginative and entertaining novel by Priya Parmar. The sister of Virginia Woolf nee Stephen, Julian Stephen and Adrian Stephen is expected to be a genius like her siblings. But not as a writer. That area is claimed by Virginia, the brilliant wordsmith in the family. Vanessa is the painter. She also becomes the surrogate mother who is expected to run the household, cater to the whims of her brothers and their Cambridge friends, and, most of all, recognize and deal with the mental breakdowns of Virginia. This she does with greater capability than should be expected of a young woman in her twenties. Through her matter-of-fact words, she reveals life in the Gordon Square house with all of the drama, joys and pains. Vanessa, first in the shadow of her dominating brothers and her mentally fragile sister, gradually evolves into the strongest figure in her circle, the one who solves and saves. It seems as though the Bloomburies take up permanent residence in her parlor. At least two nights a week, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Maynard Keyes, E. M. Forster, and Roger Fry are eating her food, possibly sleeping on one of the couches, and demonstrating the cutting wit and original ideas that would shape art, literature, and economics for decades. Yet Vanessa, for all of her agreement with the bohemian practices of the group, wants some of the traditional upper middle class goals. She is a virgin when she marries in her mid-twenties and is truly devastated when her husband Clive Bell insists on an "open marriage" after the fact. The main thread of the book is in the title, Vanessa and her sister. Vanessa is the center of Virginia's universe and she will do anything she has to to keep Vanessa bound to her. Virginia loves with a fearful love and she is willing to destroy the loved one rather than share her with anyone she deems unworthy. In this battle of wills Vanessa reveals in her daily writings what she has to do to keep her own identity and become more than just Virginia's sister who can paint a little. By the end of the book, after surviving the ultimate betrayal, she is her own person with the belief that she can never be hurt again by a person she loves. (She forgets about her children, but that is another story waiting for Parmar to write it.)I was entralled by this book. I felt as if I was reading a diary as real as the diaries of Virginia Woolf and the letters of Roger Fry. However, I know a great deal about the Bloomsburg Group so I was aware of the undercurrents and the future relationships. Anyone who does not know what happens to Strachey or how the Bell's resolve their marriage, or who ends up with whom, will be totally lost. The entries show the beginnings of these strange triangles (or rectangles even) so I would say this is a "must read" for fans of the Bloomsbury Group, but not so much for the casual reader.
    • 4/5
      Told from the point of view mostly of Vanessa Bell the sister of Virginia Wolf this novel was written in the form of journal entries interspersed with letters, telegrams and postcards. I wasn't familiar with most of this group of people and am not really a fan of Virginia Wolf. Despite this I found it interesting and engaging. My only complaint was that the format made me feel like there was a lack of character development as we hear mostly about the charters from the point of view of others.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting and very enjoyable story about the life of Vanessa Bell and her sister, Virginia Woolf. To say they had a complicated relationship is putting it mildly. Their story is told through diary entries, telegraphs, and letters.
    • 4/5
      *I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*Not knowing much about the early life of Virginia Woolf - and having no idea her sister Vanessa Bell was a talented artist - this book came as a pleasant and rather educational surprise. This book ends in 1912, with a few notes about the fates of the various characters, so by no means does it cover the entire lives of the two sisters, but it does focus on their early relationships, romances, and heartbreaks. Virginia clearly teeters on the edge of mental illness for much of the novel, and her relationship with Vanessa suffers from this but also from additional betrayals, most notably Virginia's flirtation with Vanessa's husband early in their marriage. A good read for those interested in this time period and the writers of the period.
    • 5/5
      This book is a MUST READ for anyone who loves wonderful English laced with brilliant phrases and who seeks some insight into the life and times of the Bloomsbury Group. It feels very special to be reading about a small group of people in their '20s that included not only Vanessa Bell (nee Stephen) and her sister Virginia Woolf (nee Stephen) but also a number of their friends including E. Morgan Forester (the author of "A Passage to India), Roger Fry (curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC), John Maynard Keynes (the founder of one of the main theories of modern economics) as well as Clive Bell (Vanessa's husband), Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Lady Ottoline Morrell and many other members of this groundbreaking and highly irreverent set. The good news is that one can Google each individual to learn more while still enjoying this incredibly well written NOVEL"She is prickly, not porcupine prickly but snapdraggon prickly."
    • 5/5
      I know it’s not fair to dislike a person because of mental illness, but as I read through this wonderful, beautifully written novel the Virginia Woolf as Parmar portrayed her often made me furious. Much of her young Virginia Stevens, nee Woolf’s, ‘illness’ seems behavioral, and to stem from a coddled narcissism, as much as some possible chemical imbalance. I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t the Real Virginia, but a fictional construct. The idea of sensitive artist as crazy person (or maybe that should be the other way around) is a fiction itself, in my experience; most of the fulfilled creatives I know personally are as ‘normal’ as their non-art-making counterparts—and in some cases more so.In Vanessa and Her Sister, Parmar seems to suggest a Virginia Woolf who has partly been damaged by those around her caving to her tantrums and moods, by walking on eggshells, as it were, as much as by some sinister organic cause. Parmar recreates a plausible Post Victorian environment where women are not yet freed from the myths of Hysteria and the like, and both Virginia and Vanessa live lives that are circumscribed by male dominance in the guise of ‘protection’. Near the end of the novel the vivid and frightening reminder of the era’s treatment of women comes through with particular subtle horror as Vanessa reveals to Clive—her slime-ball spouse, who first stalked her into marrying him, knocked her up, then lost interest when Vanessa then had a baby dependent on her and he was no longer the center of her attention, and proceeded to openly chase both her sister, and the offstage but large-looming Mrs. Raven Hill—a conversation she’s had with another man about a new theory that madness might stem from ‘infected teeth’ and that some success had been achieved by removing lots of them from the heads of female sufferers of mental illness. (I just bet! Can you imagine?) At this point in the novel it clear that some form of psychiatric quackery might come down on Virginia, and the effect is gut-chilling. Especially since she is not the only ‘mad woman’ in the novel. There’s Roger Fry’s poor wife, who spent the latter half of her life in an asylum and eventually died there. The cause of her death is revealed in an afterward to have been from “an incurable thickening of the skull”. Kudos to Parmar for making us see both the mischief wrecked by a possibly truly ill family member juxtaposed alongside the circumstances of a repressive society; brilliantly done.
    • 4/5
      Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group come to life in this novel as told by her older sister, the artist Vanessa Bell. It is told mainly through journal entries and supplemented by the viewpoints of others through letters and telegrams. It is a captivating look into the fragile mind of Woolf and the eccentricities and loyalties of the Bloomsbury Group. Historical fiction is an interesting method of presenting the complexities of people since the reader is never certain what is fact and what is fiction; however, this novel seems very well researched and makes me want to read more about the characters and their works, especially Virginia Woolf.
    • 4/5
      Striking novel about the Bloomsbury Group, with eldest sister and artist Vanessa Stephen Bell at its center. The story is told primarily through journal entries by Vanessa, but is enriched by viewpoints of others in the group by letters and telegrams. The daring modernity of this group of Edwardian writers, thinkers and artists exposes the eternal values of loyalty and honor as the foundation of trust. Sister Virginia's incipient madness possessive manipulations are a constant thread through Vanessa's life and the story. Well written, interesting.
    • 4/5
      It took me a while to get into this book, but once I did, I found it hard to put down this fictionalized account of Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa. It’s a great glimpse into the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals with whom they partied. It is a look at how mental illness changed the dynamics of a family.
    • 4/5
      an intimate family portrayal in a diary of social events, summer houses, European vacations, literary 'at homes', romantic triangles, tragic deaths
    • 3/5
      The author notes that it was difficult to find enough "room for invention" in writing about a group whose lives are so well documented. Although the author notes that many of the details are rooted in fact, including the complicated romantic lives, I found I needed to remind myself often that the account was fiction. The diary format works well, even though it is puzzling how correspondence belonging to the others made its way into Vanessa's diary. Vanessa came across as the linchpin of the group, we are after all, reading her diary. However, there were times when my interest flagged and I had to speed-read ahead for a bit. It's a clever story, deserving of the accolades, but needs a reader who is interested in imagining the details.I was wrong. The sea does not offer its rhythm, nor its colours, lightly. It is a snarling blue beast one moment and a frothy jade pool the next. It is disinclined to sit for a portrait.
    • 4/5
      Wonderfully crafted and fun to read. You get a feel for what the Bloomsbury group could have been like with all of the interesting dynamics and personalities.
    • 5/5
      For me personally, this year has been an awakening to the brilliance of Virginia Woolf's writing. Her work is so raw, emotive and delicate it's impossible not to develop an interest in the complex and sadly fragile mind of Woolf as a character, and the Bohemian world of the Bloomsbury set that she evolved in.As I haven't read any of the biographies on Woolf or her published diary extracts, and knew only sketchy details about the other members of the Bloomsbury group, I found this book hugely enjoyable. This book is narrated through the eyes of Vanessa Bell via fictional diary extracts, and I think this alternative viewpoint of Virginia and the Bloomsbury Group worked very well. Vanessa was highly talented and a Arts shape-changer in her own right, and whilst I started the book looking forward to learning more about Virginia, Vanessa's own story became equally fascinating.As Dorothy Parker once observed, the Bloomsbury set "...lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles". She wasn't wrong - there were love triangles on top of love triangles on top of more love triangles. Spouses falling for in-laws, straight men taking up gay lovers, gay men taking up with married women, married women taking up with Sapphists. And most astonishing of all was the relatively small circle in which these relationships began and waned. Despite the complex inter-relations, the group stayed surprisingly intact; they stood by the Bohemian lifestyle they had paved the way with, and accepted that as part of their open values on relationships, friendships must survive even when hearts were trod on by those most close to them.The fictional account of Vanessa's relationship with Virginia was fascinating. As they grow older and Vanessa marries, Parmar portrays Woolf as being tiresomely draining - an immature character who constantly needed to be the centre of her sister's world, who was jealous and tried to take for herself anything that took her sister away from her, and who forced others to treat her as a child, never taking accountability for the smallest everyday adult responsibilities.Of course this book is a work of fiction, and we do not know just how near to the truth these observations are, but there is enough documentary evidence remaining from the Bloomsbury group to suggest that Primar's interpretation is not too far from reality.The insight to the rest of the group, and to the influential circles that they moved in was engrossing. Within the group itself there were hugely important intellectuals, writers and artists, such as EM Forster, John Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey, but their contacts and friendships reached as far as the outer edges of the royal family, to artists such as Cezanne, and to writers such as Gertrude Stein.Perhaps if you have read non-fictional accounts of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell or the Bloomsbury group this book may stray too far from the truth to be palatable, but for me this was a a thoroughly enjoyable interpretation of a fascinating group of people. Their lives were so extraordinary the truth was often stranger than fiction, so I expect Pramar didn't have to drift too far from reality to make this captivating work of fiction. Quite coincidentally I was watching a separate BBC dramatisation of the Bloomsbury group at the same time of reading this book, and the two steer a very similar path in terms of interpretation of the characters and the facts about their lives. 4.5 stars - refreshing and captivating. Pramar did a fantastic job in capturing the language and outlook of Vanessa Bell and the group, to the extent that you have to remind yourself every so often that you are reading a work of fiction.
    • 5/5
      Vanessa and her Sister is a beautiful book by Priya Parmar. The book tells the story of the relationship between sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, focusing on the years 1905- 1912. Written as entries in the journal of Vanessa [Stephens] Bell, interspersed with letters to and from various members of the Bloomsbury set, the book documents the intense relationship the two shared: Virginia’s need to be the center of Vanessa’s world and Vanessa’s need for a life of her own.Though I know of the Bloomsbury set and have read some of Virginia Woolf’s works, most of the information presented in the novel was new to me. Though Parmar includes an author’s note to help the reader separate fact from fiction, the interweaving of the two did not affect my enjoyment of the story. Reading it was like floating on a sea of Parmar’s beautiful writing. Even when discussing events which can’t help but evoke strong reactions, the language guides the reader with beauty and precision.I loved this book. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a solid affecting story in which to lose themselves.
    • 4/5
      Historical fiction at its best! A fascinating look into the lives and relationships of Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. There is drama, romance, betrayal, and more drama. I absolutely LOVED this story!!