A review by judithhuang
Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe

4.0

"It comes to me, reading even the most tormented diary entries, the most pained accounts of jealousy, the most troubled fragments of memoir:these are love letters. There is Vanessa Bell stepping into a bath while Duncan shaves at the sink; there are h g wells and Rebecca west winding their way through Parisian streets, lost and arguing; there is Katherine Mansfield rushing to the French market to buy violets for murrays arrival; there is Vera Brittain carrying the orange tinted pink roses Roland gave her as she walks down the aisle to marry another man: these hours lived, painful, messy, exhilarating, richly chaotic, are another kind of art"

This and other beautiful glimpses into the lives of the Bloomsbury set both inspire and intrigue in this book which manages to be both gossipy and erudite in its examination of seven literary marriages. A guilty pleasure that is not a guilty pleasure.