Vanessa & Virginia - Paperback

by Susan Sellers (Author)

"You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you really loved me." Vanessa and Virginia are sisters, best friends, bitter rivals, and artistic collaborators. As children, they fight for attention from their overextended mother, their brilliant but difficult father, and their adored brother, Thoby. As young women, they support each other through a series of devastating deaths, then emerge in bohemian Bloomsbury, bent on creating new lives and groundbreaking works of art. Through everything--marriage, lovers, loss, madness, children, success and failure--the sisters remain the closest of co-conspirators. But they also betray each other. In this lyrical, impressionistic account, written as a love letter and elegy from Vanessa to Virginia, Sellers imagines her way into the heart of the lifelong relationship between writer Virginia Woolf and painter Vanessa Bell. With sensitivity, imagination, and fidelity to what it known of both lives, Sellers has created a powerful portrait of sibling rivalry.

Back Jacket

Sellers beautifully imagines what it must have meant to be a gifted artist yoked to a sister of dangerous, provocative genius. Cleveland Plain Dealer "Evokes the near-magical artistic world the two innovative women inhabited. . . . A thorough portrait of the complicated dance of sisters." More magazine, "Instant Classic" You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you really loved me. Vanessa and Virginia are sisters, best friends, bitter rivals, and artistic collaborators. As children, they fight for attention. As young women, they stake their claims on bohemian Bloomsbury, creating new lives and groundbreaking works of art. Through everything marriage, lovers, loss, madness, children, success and failure they remain the closest of co-conspirators. But they also betray each other.Written as a love letter and an elegy from Vanessa Bellto her sister, VirginiaWoolf, this isa stunning portrait of sibling rivalry and an imaginative triumph.
"Sellers invites us to assemble the pieces into a picture not only of the Bloomsbury circle, but of the exigencies of creative work as outlet, devotion, and anchor. A fascinating, compelling novel written with authority and tenderness." Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue

"Reading Vanessa and Virginia is like swimming across the seabed of the minds of sisters Woolf and Bell. It is a novel both exquisite and haunting. A triumph of the imagination." Rebecca Stott, author of Ghostwalk Susan Sellers is a professor of English at St. Andrews University in Scotland and co-editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Virginia Woolf's works. She is a past recipient of the Canongate Prize for New Writing and is the author of many short stories and nonfiction books. This is her first novel.

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