5.41k reviews for:

Orlando

Virginia Woolf

3.84 AVERAGE

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Orlando is a document of the early rumblings of modern gender rebellion and for that it is interesting and important but I had a hard time enjoying it.  Absolutely beautiful prose, but nonsense plot, and I had to keep the Vita Sackville-West metanarrative of it all in mind for some of the introspection to land.  

Read for SPL book bingo - “Gender Bender”
adventurous challenging mysterious reflective
challenging reflective slow-paced
adventurous funny reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No

The most shocking part of this narrative isn’t the fact that Orlando is transfem it’s that she is only 36 after living 3 centuries 😭
adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

 This was such a great, quirky concept, and the writing started off really beautiful with some captivating events, before quickly descending into an incredibly boring, pretentious and long-winded essay that felt like Woolf showing off how many big words she knows.

The dramatic and romantic writing style worked at the beginning, especially with the feverish and fantastical sequence on the frozen Thames, and even in Turkey right up until Orlando transformed into a woman. But once she was back in England, it just got incredibly dull and repetitive. A big chunk of this is just landscape descriptions and long lists of items, people and things Orlando can see through a window. I don't mind a plotless book but by the end I was kind of confused, and with barely any supporting cast the whole book rested on the shoulders of Orlando, who I unfortunately found spoiled, pretentious and irritating.

I don't know maybe I missed the point but I thought this would be a book on queerness and gender, and as Woolf is a famous feminist writers I thought she'd have something poignant and interesting to say about the constraints of gender identity, but instead we just got long ramblings about literature, poetry and general melancholy from a spoiled brat waiting for the meaning of life to fall into their lap. Like sure, Orlando is bisexual and it's mentioned he has lovers of either gender but only heteronormative relationships are actually explored in any meaningful detail (Sasha when he's a man, and Shel when he's a woman). Also Orlando got offensively dull and dramatic when he became a woman, and finding her finding completion in being "a real woman at last" after getting married was so disappointing.

This was written in the 20s, I was expecting MORE of breaking gender stereotypes and LESS overt racism, but unfortunately I got the opposite. It gets two stars because the river sequence was genuinely enchanting, there were some interesting themes briefly touched on, and the writing was captivating at times, but mostly I just found this an absolute chore to finish. 

I personally couldn’t appreciate Woolf’s vernacular and found her style of writing unappealing.
challenging funny lighthearted mysterious relaxing slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The first time I read this, hard on the heels of /To the Lighthouse/ and /Mrs. Dalloway/, I didn't much care for it. I can't account for that--it could have been overwork, could have been indigestion--but I suspect it had something to do with an underdeveloped sense of humor. This time around, what riches! I particularly loved the 3-page weather event that is the 19th century. DAMP!
adventurous funny reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character