5.46k reviews for:

Orlando

Virginia Woolf

3.84 AVERAGE

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
adventurous medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
funny lighthearted reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes

“I am growing up…I am losing my illusions, perhaps to acquire new ones”

delightful, hilarious, light-hearted exploration of self, gender, and queerness. i thoroughly enjoyed this book! Virginia Woolf…i was unfamiliar with ur game (i judged too harshly based on Ms. Dalloway)

audiobook
adventurous challenging funny inspiring reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

the prose are so beautiful and evocative. truly a crazy story if you think about when it was written, and still a great book :)

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
funny hopeful 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: No

The narrative style follows Orlando's life, more playful and faster paced as a young boy, and becoming more of the classic Virginia Woolf style I recognise as Orlando matures.

I didn't realise that she was this funny!
adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

“But love - as the male novelists define it - and who, after all, speak with greater authority? - has nothing whatever to do with kindness, fidelity, generosity, or poetry. Love is slipping off one's petticoat and — But we all know what love is. Did Orlando do that?
Truth compels us to say no, she did not. If then, the subject of one's biography will neither love nor kill, but will only think and imagine, we may conclude that he or she is no better than a corpse and so leave her.”

rest in peace Virginia Woolf, you would have loved Rachel Sennott.

-1/2 star for casual racism tho

Orlando is verrassend geestig én origineel. Het is niet alleen inhoudelijk een origineel verhaal, ook nu nog, maar ook de wijze waarop het verteld wordt, is uitermate origineel. En ook daarvoor geldt: ook nu nog.

Woolf is het meest bekend vanwege haar Mrs. Dalloway, maar ik ben van mening dat Orlando (nog) beter is. En dat terwijl ik denk dat als ik het boek zelf lees ipv er naar te luisteren, ik het nog meer zal weten te appreciëren. Dat komt niet omdat het slecht wordt voorgelezen, integendeel zelfs, het is een genot om naar te luisteren, maar Orlando is - volgens mij - een verhaal dat gelezen moet worden. Omdat je een zin nog eens wilt lezen. Of een woord. Of een alinea. Of terug wil bladeren en dat stukje nog eens wilt lezen. Of omdat je even wil stoppen, precies daar, en het zojuist gelezene wil overpeinzen, op je in wil laten werken of om simpelweg even uitgebreid te lachen. Daarvoor is het uitgesproken woord te vluchtig. Bovendien houdt de voorlezer er natuurlijk geen rekening mee en leest vrolijk verder.

Ik ga Orlando lezen. En daarna, wie weet, ook nog bekijken.

I have so many questions- why conclude with
Spoiler Shelmerdine returning, after all of Orlando's self-aware musing that love is women's only acceptable pastime? Who is Nick Greene? Why does he get to live? Why, on the other hand, must Orlando's various house-staff come and go so quickly? Who are they all, what do they represent?
? I know I'll keep coming back.

I adored this book. The sheer smoke and perfume of the prose, the irresistibly grand and fantastical main character, and all the times Woolf lazily pulls aside the curtain to stick her head through and tell us what she thinks about thinking, writing and living.

"For, when anybody comes to a conclusion it is as if they had tossed the ball over the net and must wait for the unseen antagonist to return it to them."