ORLANDO by VIRGINIA WOOLF

ORLANDO

BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

THE BLURB:-

Virginia Woolf's Orlando, 'the longest and most charming love letter in literature,' playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Wool's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries of boisterous, fantastic adventure, the novel opens as Orlando, a wronged nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost.

At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel's indulges in farce and irony to consider the role of women in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women, Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised on the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.

THE REALITY:-

Wahey! I don't know if this is supposed to be bawdy, but that's how it came across to me. (And I do love a good romp!) Joking aside, I have never seen a book written in this way, where the central character has a life which spans around 400 years and changes sex halfway through (stick that in yer pipe and smoke it, all you “I have a right to be gender neutral/ fluid” snowflakes.)  It would seem that sexual ambiguity is nothing new, and I don't suppose you need me to tell you that.

I must confess, I approached this work with trepidation, as I found Woolf's “stream of consciousness” approach, evident in To The Lighthouse, a bit drawn out- though effective. There was no such approach with this novel, and I regret that I didn't have the time spare to flow through and really get into the first half. But I did with the second half, and flattened 80 pages in one night (it's not a long novel, at 162 pages.)

I am currently studying the “self”, so I'm glad I was able to pull out some important quotes from this work for reference and I also found the introductory notes at the beginning helpful (I have learnt my lesson from a previous novel, and read the notes after I'd finished the story, otherwise they can take away the element of surprise.)

This book was inspired by the life of Woolf's lesbian lover, Vita Sackville-West (although Vita's mother reacted to the novel by defacing it) and is both away with the fairies, but fun at the same time. It's a good study of life and times throughout various ages, and the mannerisms and customs of this varied setting are depicted fluently. I'm glad it included parts of good ol' London town, as I was easily able to visualise the City, at the point where (spoiler alert!) Orlando gets his heart broken. I could feel for Orlando, although this wasn't a novel that seemed to offer up too much in-depth study of emotions- rather it was more about action. Orlando returns to her lands with quite a poignant ending, suitable for a lover of reading and writing (I've recently studied whether these should be one word, as they run in tangent with each other if you are a writer, but... readingandwriting flipped flings up the word dreading, offending the eyeballs, so that's a no.)

Give this a go, I dare you! It will captivate you and make you smile, and really, isn't that just what a good novel should do?

THE ESKIMO'S SECRET by CAROLYN KEENE

THE ESKIMO'S SECRET

BY CAROLYN KEENE

THE BLURB:-

The telephone voice rang startlingly loud. 'Miss Nancy Drew?' The voice was unfamiliar. 'I'm calling about your father.'

'Where is he? Who is this? What is going on?' Nancy demanded.

'If you want your father back, you must do what we tell you,' rasped the voice.

Nancy is desperate. Her father has been kidnapped- and she must hand over to his captors one of her dearest friends, whom they believe will lead them to a priceless Eskimo treasure. If she refuses, she'll never see her father again...

THE REALITY:-

Yes, I know, I know- you may well question what Miss Elaineous is doing reading a Nancy Drew mystery story, which is aimed at teenagers. But the truth is that I myself once read this, as a teenager, and I bought it simply for a line I want to reference in a critical essay I'm putting forward for my next MA submission, and I thought it best to get both the quote and the reference details spot-on.

I am currently writing an autobiographical fiction piece about my first interview ever, at Great Yarmouth College of Art. It was a very stressful day for a fifteen-year-old, taking two buses across the country solo, and then the interview itself wasn't great and I wasn't accepted. Oh well, I didn't think much to the place anyway (the college was a dump, and closed less than ten years later) and it was their loss. But the quote I remembered came from this book and is pertinent to my memoir. It's “Look with the eyes of the past to find the darkest dawn”. This novel is something I would have read not that long before that first, sad, interview (I do think my life would have been much better had I been accepted, even though I wasn't overly impressed with the building, which was declining into dereliction rapidly).

As a book it has everything a mystery story needs- good characters, an interesting plot, an increase in pace and all of this tempered by a touch of realism. I like the way young adult fiction (and I would class it as this, rather than children's fiction) skirts over the grittier aspects of life, such as where does Nancy find the money to carry out her escapades. One assumes that her father, attorney Carson Drew is rich. I would possibly shove my memoir into the YA section, as it is about a fifteen year old, and it's something others of that age will be able to relate to.

Typos abounded (I counted at least four), with nancy printed... just like that, with a small N, Helen mysteriously having an a added to the end of her name, form rather than from and two adjacent words split and re-formed, so publishers take note!

I read this book in a few hours, and would highly recommend it to teenagers.