Susan Sellers
Two Ravens Press, £8.99A NOVEL based upon the life of any famous person runs the risk of being received unfavourably if the reader is tempted to compare the real life with the fictional character. But the challen
ge of writing a novel about a writer such as Virginia Woolf seems almost insurmountable when taking into account the vast numbers of ways in which Woolf recorded her own life in diaries, letters, essays and novels.
Perhaps aware of these pitfalls, Sellers chooses to narrate her fragmentary novel through the voice of Vanessa Bell, Woolf's sister, rather than Woolf herself. This might have worked well, if only Sellers hadn't fallen prey to the temptation of lifting words and phrases from Woolf's own memoirs and paraphrasing them – but only just – to suit her purpose. Hence the line "ate fried eggs 'with plenty of frizzling'" from Woolf's memoir is reproduced here as "eggs fried for breakfast with plenty of frizzle".
Sellers begins her novel with the tired story of the sisters' repressed Victorian upbringing at 22 Hyde Park Gate, but we already have Woolf's autobiographical Moments Of Being for this – a book that Sellers draws heavily upon for her novel – and Vanessa Bell's memoir Sketches In Pen And Ink. Is there really any need for a fictional interpretation of these well-known events? The answer can only be 'yes' if the novelist manages to bring poignancy and a new angle to the story. There are inconsistencies, too: although Sellers ("an expert on Woolf's life and work") has made her novel perilously similar to the memoir and diaries, there are still passages that haven't been researched quite well enough. Would Woolf's half sister Stella really have done her own pile of sewing in a house staffed by eight servants?
These lapses only serve to irritate further, which is a shame, because Sellers can write fluid, affecting prose and might have written a compelling novel of her own rather than hiding behind Woolf and Bell. But overall, Vanessa And Virginia remains a baffling piece of work. One paragraph seems particularly ironic: the ageing Vanessa Bell addresses the memory of her dead sister, concluding that "if you were writing this, you would know how to do the portrait of it, would add your own brilliant powers of observation, your vivacity and wit, your genius for describing the essence of a thing in a few, consummate strokes". Yes, quite.
The full article contains 412 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
