![]() ![]() ![]() Vanessa’s imagined diary is wrenchingly sad: “Thoby, you died this morning … I need to go and tell you that you died today … You are the only one I want to talk to about it.” His death and Vanessa’s sudden decision to marry are linked: “And now I will not have to go through the next terrible part alone.” ![]() Occasionally I longed for a different outcome. Vanessa’s anger and sense of betrayal is exacerbated rather than tempered by Virginia’s mental fragility.Īlthough the characters in the novel are “very much fictional”, Parmar sticks fairly closely to the facts. Intensely jealous of her sister’s new bond, Virginia plans to captivate Clive herself. Some of these spaces are to be found within the suffocating, three-way affair between Virginia, Vanessa and Clive. Parmar speaks of “finding enough room for invention in the negative spaces they left behind”. We already know what will happen to poor Thoby we know that Virginia’s problematic and protracted spinsterhood will come to an end, and that Vanessa’s marriage to the hearty Clive Bell will eventually unravel. There can be no suspense, at least for Bloomsbury aficionados (and who else would read this?). Parmar acknowledges the difficulty in her afterword: “It is not easy to fictionalise the Bloomsbury Group as their lives are so well documented.” The novel spans the period 1905 to 1912 and is structured around Vanessa’s fictional journal, interwoven with letters. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |