Orlando

A mythical, quite psychedelically written 'biography' over four centuries as Orlando moves from a boy under Queen Elizabeth, through countries, careers and personas including being nonplussed by her sudden overnight transformation into womanhood while ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Eventually passing through the Victorian era of misogynistic oppression, marriage, publishing her life long work of poetry and reflecting on her many lives in the early 20th century. The world here is just as it is, without explanation asked or given, as people fade away and back again over centuries.

I absolutely adore Woolf's prose and ethereal style which here feels like floating through Orlando's memories as hazily remembered mythologised rumours. This also makes it a difficult read in places if you are not in the space for it. I never connected to it as a kid, but certainly as the book reaches its final chapter, this feels like a work intended for someone who has lived a long life with a hundred lives and the world has passed by faster than they can recall. The eternal becomes fleeting, yet remains its core. Some passages I struggled with which made me want to skim. But then I re-read a few times to absorb it and it feet like letting wine sit on your tongue to mellow out and pick up the flavours. Not unique to Woolf of course but after reading mostly recent fiction lately, it is rarer to have prose take that risk with a reader.

Certainly its aspect on gender is fascinating and certainly stands out to me so much more since by transition. It feels far stronger than the film in that regard (I adore the film, though these are different beasts in many ways) in giving a narration on gender and the transcendence of it. I didn't expect to connect to it as a trans narrative as much as I did, all things considered, and in many ways it bares little resemblance to the trans narratives we see so often today. It is quiet, considered, self assured and reflective. Not to mention hilarious in places; Orlando herself is someone I could laugh with as deeply as debate with. There if feels like a strong element of Woolf punching through the pages with her offhand jokes on sexism and homophobia.

Small warning that there are some dated terms and attitudes concerning race, including on the first page and Woolf did hold racist and antisemitic views. Just to be clear for anyone who only knows her as a queer writer and hasn't read into her much before.

Lire Orlando, c'est se laisser porter par une légère brise à travers les âges et les genres. Si ce n'est pas mon Virginia Woolf préféré, j'y ai quand même retrouvé ce délicieux nectar, cette sève littéraire qui transporte mirifiquement en nous images et sensations avec douceur et bienveillance, et particulièrement ici, avec une réelle jubilation de l'écrivaine. J'ai trouvé quelques passages un peu longs, mais rien qui ne puisse gâcher la lecture, parce qu'il suffit d'une phrase, d'une description, pour à nouveau nous immerger dans le périple multi-séculaire de notre héro·ïne. L’ouvrage mériterait plusieurs lectures, tant il est chargé de thèmes et de détails qui nous échappent — d’autant qu’un siècle après son écriture, bien des références nous manquent.

I deliberately didn't read up about Orlando before I started listening to my Audible download because I didn't want to be be distracted by trying to fit facts of Woolf's life with Vita Sackville-West into whatever the story would bring. I think I made the right decision - and probably wouldn't have got the references anyway! Orlando is written as the biography of an Elizabethan boy who ages only twenty-odd years while the rest of the world advances by several hundred years. Oh, and Orlando also becomes a woman. As you do.

I absolutely adored Woolf's descriptions of Elizabethan England. Her prose when she allows it to run away with her is sublime and many times I felt as if I were really there. My audio was narrated by Clare Higgins who does a fantastic job throughout, especially during such passages. Other highlights for me were the encroachment of the damp and the sudden sweep of the Victorians. However, I wasn't convinced by the Turkish Gypsy episodes and felt they lacked the same immediacy, and the writing seemed to lose structure towards the very end, probably deliberately, but I thought this made the conclusions tough to follow.

Recurring characters made it seem perfectly natural that Orlando aged so slowly and the story never came across as contrived which, having just reread my two line synopsis, is pretty amazing! The poet Nicholas Greene and his Groundhog Day pronouncements showed just how far people haven't come in so many years. And the same is true of Orlando's androgynous outlook which Woolf uses to great effect to show the restrictions placed on women by societies that revere and patronise concurrently.

I enjoyed listening to Orlando and would even wish that it had been longer. There is a lot of humour, which I hadn't expected, and it didn't seem to matter that I didn't recognise the real people behind many of the characters. The story can be appreciated on its own terms with further layers of understanding added by Googling later.