Adeline

by Norah Vincent

On 18 April 1941, twenty-two days after Virginia Woolf went for a walk near her weekend house in Sussex and never returned, her body was reclaimed from the River Ouse. Norah Vincent's ADELINE reimagines the events that brought Woolf to the riverbank, offering us a denouement worthy of its protagonist. With poetic precision and psychological acuity, Vincent channels Virginia and Leonard Woolf, T. S. and Vivienne Eliot, Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, laying bare their genius and their blind spots, their achievements and their failings, from the inside out. And haunting every page is Adeline, the name given to Virginia Stephen at birth, which becomes the source of Virginia's greatest consolation, and her greatest torment. Intellectually and emotionally disarming, ADELINE - a vibrant portrait of Woolf and her social circle, the infamous Bloomsbury Group, and a window into the darkness that both inspired and doomed them all - is a masterpiece in its own right by one of our most brilliant and daring writers.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mental Health, Literary Fiction, 20th Century, Historical, Mental Illness

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2015

About the author

Norah Vincent was a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies from its 2001 inception to 2003. As a freelance journalist, Vincent wrote columns for Salon, The Advocate, the Los Angeles Times, and The Village Voice. Her essays, columns and reviews appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post and many more regional newspapers around the country. In 2003 she took a leave from writing her nationally syndicated political opinion columns in order to write her New York Times bestselling book Self-Made Man, the story of a woman living, working and dating in drag as a man.

Vincent held a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Williams College. Prior to her death she lived in New York City.

Vincent died via medically assisted suicide on July 6, 2022 at a clinic in Switzerland.

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

If someone had told me when I first started reading this novel that I would end of giving it five stars, I would have thought they were crazy. I had a hard time in the beginning but then I realized that this was a book that once you got into the rhythm of the prose you just needed to keep reading, just this book, it wanted all my attention sort of like Virginia herself wanted or needed.. I unfortunately never read just one book at a time but I really wanted to read this book, so I started over and just read it through. It was brilliant.

Adeline was her real first name and in this book Adeline is her alter ego. When Virginia is having one of her so called spells, it is Adenine to whom she talks. Such an amazing look at the inner workings of Virginia's mind, some of her past that she can't let go of, her thought process as she wrote her novels, her fears and her marriage.

It includes conversations with Yeats, Thomas Elliott and his wife, Vivian, and others that were important to her social circle. Hers was a mind that was not only brilliant but always pondering, musing about many different things. Leonard always worried about her mental state, trying to keep her steady. We know how the story ends and I finished this book feeling so sympathetic to what she had fought through all her life. It also made me want to read many of her other novels, those that were mentioned in this book particularly.

Vincent gives the reader an inside look at Virginia Woolf, her daily struggles, insecurities and triumphs. The prose is wonderful and though the end of her life is a sad one, she accomplished so much and lived with so much, until she couldn't. This book helps us see why.

A must read for all fans of this amazing author.

ARC from publisher.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite novels of 2015. The depth of its literary reference and psychological insight is truly impressive, and reading this personal backstory from the author only intrigued me further. This is closely based on Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf and would be a good companion read to that and to the later novels. Set in 1925–1941, it focuses on Woolf’s marriage and later career. Here “Adeline,” Woolf’s actual first name (abandoned for her middle name), represents Woolf’s stunted, adolescent self – “The seed of me that was then, and grew no further.”

Structured like a five-act play, the novel revolves around Virginia’s philosophical conversations with Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey and his lover Carrington, T.S. and Valerie Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and Woolf’s doctor, Octavia Wilberforce. Vincent has produced a remarkable picture of mental illness from the inside: “slowly comes the blackness with its burning edge-glow eating inward to the center until all the parchment of her right mind is consumed and there is nothing but ash.”

See my full review at The Bookbag. (Also included in my BookTrib article on recent novels about Virginia Woolf.)

[Magdalena aka A Bookaholic Swede · Rating 2 out of 5]

Adeline was a book I really looked forward to reading. I read Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers a few years back and I loved that book. When it comes to Virginia Woolf I have so far only read Mrs. Dalloway, but I have plans to read more books by Mrs. Woolf.

So believe me, I was quite happy when I got a chance to read this book. But unfortunately I just couldn't connect with it, nor the story or the characters. There were moments in the book when the text really spoke to me, but not nearly enough to make me truly enjoy this book. In the end, it just became a struggle to finish the book. Too much rambling for my taste. But as I said before, there were moments that were good, often when other characters interacted with Virginia, like Lytton or T.S Eliot or Yeats. But the moments were like gems in the sand, rare and hard to find.

I just want to say that this was a book that just didn't work for me. I hoped that I would get into the story, but it never happened.

I received this copy from the publisher in return for an honest review!

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been a number of novels written about Virginia Woolf lately, including “Vaness and Her Sister,” by Priya Parmar, which I enjoyed very much. As such, I was interested to read this latest effort, which looks at Virginia Woolf’s life from 1925 until her death in 1941. The author cleverly weaves together a host of characters, snapshots and situations, in a rather disjointed fashion, which mirrors Virginia’s thoughts. Virginia was named, ‘Adeline,’ but the name was abandoned in favour of her middle name and, in this novel, ‘Adeline’ becomes a childhood version of herself, through which we glimpse the past.

Of course, it is impossible to view Virginia Woolf as a solitary person; she is known as part of her famous social circle and her relationships are central to both how she is seen and how she saw herself. Her sister Vanessa, husband Leonard, Tom (T.S. to us) Eliot and his wife, Vivien, Vita Sackville-West, friend Lytton Strachey, who misguidedly proposed to Virginia, before exhorting Leonard to marry her, all appear in these pages. However, it is Virginia herself who is central – her thoughts, her fears, her struggles and her demons. She mirrors her marriage against Tom and Vivien’s, seeing parallels in Vivien’s ‘nervous disease’ and their childless state.

This is a sensitively written novel, which attempts to show Virginia’s viewpoint and view of life – marriage, friendship and, above all, writing. I enjoyed this very much; it has a real sense of what was central to Virginia Woolf’s life and to her talent. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Extraordinary Marriage

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

This is not a line from Norah Vincent's "Novel of Virginia Woolf," but Virginia's own, the last sentence of her suicide note to Leonard Woolf, her husband of 29 years. And if one thing comes strongly through Vincent's novel, it is indeed the strength of their bond. Sexually, the marriage appears never to have been consummated—Virginia was abused by her half-brother as a child and had a horror of penetration—but it contains more comradeship, more mutual support, than many a normal marriage. In a book constructed like a play, out of acts and scenes, those involving only Virginia and Leonard have a grace, an emotional directness, that is often missing in her encounters with other literary figures of the time—WB Yeats, TS Eliot, and others—with the possible exception of Lytton Strachey, the gay man who was her first fiancé and lifelong confidant.

I must admit that I approached the book with trepidation. To take on one of the greatest prose stylists of the century is a challenge for any novelist. Previous fictional accounts of Virginia's life, such as Susan Sellers' Vanessa and Virginia (which I have read) and Priya Parmar's recent Vanessa and Her Sister (merely sampled), tell the story through the mouth of her sister Vanessa Bell, who was a painter not a writer, and the most celebrated Woolf novelist, Michael Cunningham in The Hours, uses an updated version of Virginia's style for his treatment of his more modern characters but paints the author herself with a delicate objectivity. Norah Vincent's style is less airy than any of these; it is dense and introspective, as Woolf herself could be. But I found I could soon settle into it, and saw no obvious conflict between style and subject. Indeed, I read the book with avid interest, as the psycho-biography of an extraordinary woman at an extraordinary time, already knowing most of the basic facts, but fascinated to see them from a novelist's perspective. The closest parallel I can think of is a novel about another author, Henry James, portrayed in similar fashion by Colm Tóibín in The Master.

Reading about Norah Vincent herself helps me see why this subject attracted her. Two of her previous books are Self-Made Man, about eighteen months she spent passing as a man, and Voluntary Madness, about her voluntary self-commitment in three different mental institutions. Clearly she has an interest in the sexual ambiguities of Woolf's life and the mental disorders that ultimately drove her to suicide. Both matters are treated frankly in the novel, but without titillation. Virginia's affair with Vita Sackville-West, for example, is given as fact before moving on; there are no boudoir scenes. More intimate by far are the brilliant opening chapters of the novel, which show Virginia first in the bath, and then in bed with "Adeline," her imaginary childhood alter ego, called by her first given name. When their conversation, which seems almost like one between lovers, turns to memories of their shared childhood, and Virginia suddenly has the insight that she would develop into her masterpiece To the Lighthouse, I thrilled to the way that Vincent was pulling together the threads of history, psychology, and art.

At this stage, I was at five Amazon stars; I have since reduced it to a Goodreads three, though a high three. Several reasons. Vincent's book is a gloss on a life, not the life itself; you have to know most of the figures in the Bloomsbury Group beforehand and to have read at least the major novels; she assumes this knowledge, and doesn't explain. Surprisingly, I also found her less good at exploring Virginia's pathology than her creativity; the two chapters leading up to her suicide are very tough going, and quite confused in contrast to the heartbreaking simplicity of her actual suicide note. And finally, the use of "Adeline" as both confidant and antagonist, a device that promised to work brilliantly at the start of the book, is allowed to languish and hardly contributes at all towards the end. Still, this is a serious study by a serious writer, and well worth the reading.

[Lisa Guidarini · Rating 1 out of 5]

The degree of difficulty involved in writing Adeline must have been great. I can’t imagine how long Vincent spent reading bios about Woolf, her letters and diaries. I’m deeply impressed by the breadth of scholarship involved. In her notes, she cites her sources, which are extensive, if not complete. Then again, a complete bibliography of books about Woolf is a life’s worth of reading, much less time spent interpreting all the facts, forming them into a work of fiction. Or “faction,” maybe. Has anyone used that term to refer to fiction disguised as fact? Let’s say they haven’t and that I’m breaking new ground. No one else will care but I like the thought I’ve CREATED SOMETHING, unlikely as it is.

[I won’t tell if you won’t. And I’m pretty sure you don’t care either way.]

What Vincent has done in Adeline (The title is Virginia Woolf’s actual first name. She went by her middle name.) is take Woolf’s life, novel by novel, breaking it into acts as if in a play. Starting in 1925 with her inspiration for To the Lighthouse, triggered by time spent soaking in the bath (I really don’t know if this is accurate), the author expands the story to include what was going on in Woolf’s life, and within her circle of friends, at the time she was writing each book. Vincent pays much attention to Virginia’s relationship with her husband, Leonard Woolf, using his point of view to explore the mental illness she suffered – presumed to have been bipolar disorder or manic depression. In Virginia’s shoes I believe Leonard’s actions would have felt annoying. They show how much he cares but his occasional coddling, as depicted in this novel, would have driven me absolutely bonkers. Was he this protective? I never got the impression he was so overbearing. And was he so overly-dramatic? He dealt with this for a very long time. It’s not as if any of this was new to him. After a while, even the most unusual of situations will become “normal.”

He was always watchful, always on the lookout for her inevitable tumbles into depression. Knowing the signs her extreme downturns were returning, he needed to be certain she got what was considered appropriate care. Of course, what was considered appropriate then is far from modern-day treatment, using a combination of drugs to control the chemical imbalances in the brain. Anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds and anti-psychotics, regulated by a psychiatrist, are often used in a “cocktail” to keep the mood – and racing mind – on an even keel. Drugs, paired with talk therapy, can go a long way toward controlling bipolar disorder. For Woolf, taking away all stimulants was her “rest cure.” Because mania brought on her obsessive writing, she was kept away from it. Likewise, reading, very closely associated, needless to say. It must have been a living hell for her. No wonder she dreaded the inevitability of it.

Bipolar disorder is thought to be a dormant condition in many, brought out by a triggering event. So, not everyone predisposed toward bipolar will exhibit symptoms. There are also two different forms: Bipolar I and Bipolar II. Not being a psychiatrist, going by what I know to be true, I think it’s more probably the latter that afflicted Virginia Woolf. Bipolar I is the almost solely depressive form. Manic stages are present but greatly muted, in comparison to Bipolar II. Mostly, Bipolar I is a deep funk, often tending toward suicidal impulse. Bipolar II, however, is the one most people identify as the “true” form, usually unaware it’s not the only possibility. People with this condition exhibit incredible highs, during which they are manically productive and feel indestructible, then fall very far into depression, often needing to be hospitalized to keep them from harming themselves.

In Woolf’s case, we can fairly safely presume the event which released her bipolar was the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her half brother, George Duckworth. I wanted to slam the book down when Vincent wrote dialogue between Virginia and Leonard, in which Virginia so casually mentions the abuse. The way the two referred to it was wooden and unnatural, even taking into account Leonard was well aware of her past. It was a lazy shortcut device used to inform the reader of the horrors Virginia underwent.Trying to recall how Woolf referred to the events with Duckworth, I don’t remember her speaking of it casually. It’s a struggle to recall her talking about it at all, even in her diaries, and letters to her beloved sister Vanessa, much less while she’s watching Leonard weeding the garden. After that section I read with a very guarded disposition, no longer completely trusting the author. For the record, this wasn’t all that far into the book.

Beyond that, I have issues with Vincent’s stylistic choices, her tendency to stay too much within Virginia’s head. There’s too much potential for misinterpretation, for creating thoughts she never had, leading the reader to believe she was a far different person than she was in reality. I’ll admit, I tend to feel protective of Woolf, sensitive to how she’s portrayed. Already feeling distrustful certainly didn’t help.

It’s also an annoyance that the language used is so formal, the prose over-written. It would have been better pared down to minimalism, in my opinion. It would have made for a much better book without prose verging on, sometimes crossing into,”purple” territory. Never mind the high intellects found in the real-life players of this drama; it would have been perfectly excusable to skirt that, opting for s more simple style, focusing on the story and not so much overly flamboyant conversations. It needs less blow by blow, more showing and less telling. As written, it was difficult keeping focus. Every few paragraphs something would sound “off” to me, reminding me I’m reading a book and not immersed in the lives of the Bloomsbury Group. This is the opposite of what you want to find in a novel, any disconnection from what’s happening in the book. Novels should be as seamless as possible. It’s crucial the reader lose herself in the story, not wander off to think about shopping lists or what’s for dinner. Fiction is an alternate reality, with emphasis on the real. Even in the case of fantasy and science fiction, a story needs to feel real, as in possible. If I’m reading a work of horror, I need to feel frightened. If it’s a dystopia, I should feel unnerved and worried, uncomfortable. I never lost myself in Adeline.

There may be a narrow readership for Adeline: those with a casual curiosity about Woolf who aren’t interested in more than a surface grasp of her life, as well as an introduction to the major figures in her peer group. What’s less fortunate is these readers may feel as though they’re doing a bit of wading to get to the meat of it, that the characters have personalities so big and overbearing it’s overwhelming. Using such a loud style does no favors to readers unfamiliar with Virginia Woolf. Rather, it’s off-putting.

There are so many nonfiction books out there about Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, if a reader wants to get a sketch of her life. Hermione Lee’s is definitive but too long for the casual reader. Instead, Nigel Nicholson’s short Penguin Lives edition, titled simply Virginia Woolf, would be my recommendation. Nigel Nicholson was the son of Virginia’s one-time lesbian lover, Vita Sackville-West and uses:



” … family archives and first-hand experience for his brisk, dutiful biography. For the young Nicolson, Woolf first appeared as a lively and amusing visitor. Not yet famous, to Nicolson she was like “a favourite aunt who brightened our simple lives with unexpected questions.”

– Publishers Weekly


Overall, the effort gets points for the idea but loses most of its value in the areas of stylistic choice and execution, which, well doesn’t leave it with much. Try as I did, I could not abide Adeline. Perhaps I’m too predisposed to finding fiction based on the life of Woolf to be irritating (it took two times for me to grow to love Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, not that I’m comparing the magnitude of two books). I cannot recommend the book.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Norah Vincent’s Adeline: A Novel of Virginia Woolf is, in simplified terms, a fictionalised biography of one of the twentieth century’s most enduring authors. Adeline, named as she was after her mother Julia’s deceased sister, was Woolf’s given name. It was never used within her family, ‘as Julia did not like to use the name full of painful association’.

The structure of Adeline is fitting; Vincent has chosen to split the story into separate ‘Acts’, all of which correspond to Woolf’s own publications; one is entitled ‘Night and Day’, for example, and another ‘The Voyage Out’. The novel begins on June the 13th 1925, and ends with Woolf’s suicide on the 28th of March 1941. Throughout, Woolf’s thoughts – all of which have been influenced by her diaries and letters – have been woven into various plotlines from her novels. Vincent is marvellous at demonstrating in this manner how inspiration strikes.

In Adeline, Woolf comes to life immediately, and the novel’s opening scene is particularly vivid: ‘She is lying full down in the bath, with the tepid water hooding her head and lapping just below the vaulted arches of her nostrils… She can hear her heart galloping distantly, as it so often does when she is ill, thrumming weakly but so quickly, a soft insistence sucking at the drums of her ears’. Vincent goes on to describe the way in which, ‘as if startled by the sound of her own voice, she sits upright with a great sloshing urgency, her buttocks squeaking on the porcelain, her knees bucking, legs tensing straight and splashing’.

Vincent is so in control of Woolf’s dual personality; one gets the impression that she comprehends it, and its implications, perfectly: ‘There is the stall of recognition. She knows this feeling, this progression of decline, she knows it very well, the consciousness curling under the despair, helpless as a page in the fire, succumbing to the grey, darkening possession’.

In Adeline, Woolf and her genius have essentially been placed upon a pedestal, from where they are examined. Vincent has included some well developed conversations, and has built the plot around Woolf’s relationships with others, from her siblings and husband Leonard, to her affair with Vita Sackville-West. Famous characters from the Bloomsbury Group have been considered too, from biographer Lytton Strachey to poet T.S. Eliot.

Adeline has been meticulously researched, and its prose is both beautiful and intelligent. The turns of phrase are deftly created: ‘The world seemed to be speeding up and slowing down, going liquid and solid at the same time, and me with it’. The literary techniques which Vincent has used – Woolf talking to her child self, for example – work so well, as does the way in which the story follows both Virginia and Leonard. The Bloomsbury Group, intrinsic as it was in the lives of the Woolfs, has been considered too: ‘Their life, their bond, their work and their circle of closely kept friends are about one thing: maintenance of the necessary illusion’. So many ideas can be found within the story, and one really gets a feel for Woolf’s world.

The only thing which let the novel down for me are the Americanisms which sometimes creep into the text. The use of the word ‘gotten’ is rather jarring, and its historical inaccuracy with relation to England during the 1920s and 1930s pulls the novel from its otherwise excellent historical grounding.

Adeline is a must-read for any fans of Woolf, or those with interest in the wider circle of the Bloomsbury Group, providing as it does a stunning and interesting portrayal of an author whose life and legacy still fascinate to this day.

[Kathy Cunningham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was ADELINE a failure for me because I’m not a great fan of Virginia Woolf’s writing? Or was it a failure for me because Norah Vincent’s prose is so stylistically pretentious and so over-wrought in its self-indulgence that I had difficulty getting through it? Perhaps it’s a little bit of both.

The novel attempts to channel Woolf’s artistic and psychological demons, which could have been interesting had it not been so awkwardly delivered. In the first chapter, Woolf is taking a bath while struggling to “give birth” to her other self, the self that will write another brilliant novel (i.e. “To the Lighthouse”). She plays with words in her head, waiting for the moment when she and the “other” will merge into something artistic and separate. While this is happening, her husband is out in the corridor fretting about her emotional stability (he recognizes her precarious psychological state). Finally, the “other” appears – it’s Adeline, which was Virginia’s name at birth – Adeline is the one she was but isn’t. In one reality, Virginia disappears into the writing itself. In another reality, Virginia and Adeline lie side by side in conversation. The suggestion is that this process produces Woolf’s stories, which therefore spring from her soul like words from a seer.

Vincent writes her story in present tense, presumably to better connect the reader with Woolf’s internal musings, and with the inner conflict between her psychology and her art. Unfortunately, this awkward style of storytelling actually distracts from any real connection between reader and character. And Vincent’s tendency to overuse metaphors and similes further distances the reader. For example, from the first page: “Her long, exhausted feet rise, . . . clutch the livid brass spout, flexing and squirming like newborns of an alien brood, quailing under the light.” Or this, from the end of the first chapter: “She falls with a hollow thump into the worn armchair, which enfolds her like a mouth, the molded cushions tonguing the length of her like an indulgent mother cow.”

So it was slow-going for me as I attempted to get past the verbiage to find the story. And there is a story – it’s about Woolf’s relationship with her loving husband, her friends (most of them familiar literary figures from the Bloomsbury group), and herself (the Adeline part of her and the Virginia part of her). Woolf most likely suffered from bipolar disorder, and her bouts of depression were a strain on her marriage and her ability to write. In ADELINE, Vincent attempts to shed light on her decision to commit suicide in 1941. And light is shed.

While I am admittedly not a great fan of Woolf’s prose, I do admire her wit, her cleverness, and her sense of humor. None of that comes through in ADELINE, which is both somber and heavy-handed. I would recommend this for fans of Woolf who are familiar with her novels and her life, and who are intrigued by the prospect of spending 275 pages inside her fractured psyche. If instead, like me, you come to this novel as a lover of literature but not necessarily of Woolf, be forewarned – this is not an enjoyable read.

[Please note: I was provided a copy of this novel for review; the opinions expressed here are my own.]

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

This story just did not interest me and I did try. I'm not a Virginia Woolf reader so perhaps there could lie the problem. But also, I don't like a story that is told all from the inner thinkings of the characters. I understand why the author used this technique because of V.W.'s mental state but it didn't work for me. Even when the characters were in dialogue with each other the subject matter bored me and again showing my ignorance, I didn't know much about the characters that were based on actual people/writers, etc. I don't want to say don't try this book because a different reader may have an entire different reaction to the book.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book with the most causal understanding of what Bloomsbury might be, an unreasonable bias against historical fiction, and an affection for Virginia Woolf based entirely on the title of Albee's long ago play: "Who's Afraid of..." Still, for what it's worth, I was captivated from the first chapter by Vincent's intelligent prose and her facility with stream of consciousness thought and dialogue. I was intrigued with all of her characters whether they were real or not, famous or fabricated. I was impressed with her humorous and touching construction of a literary irony (the story begins, ends, and wallows throughout in a character submerged in herself, in her isolation, in her supposedly futile efforts to communicate.) I was bowled over that a book with so little physical action (alas, no one is tied to a railway track or jumps out of an airplane without a parachute) managed to not only keep me awake but keep me engaged. I think I need to read some books by this Woolf lady. Frightening or not.

[Sally Wragg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled occasionally with this book, a portrait of the writer Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group, but I'm glad I persevered as overall, I think it was worth the effort. It brings to life the dynamics of Virginia Woolf's relationship with her husband Leonard, and that of her close contemporaries, in particular, Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivien and the poet W.B. Yeats, leaving me with a greater appreciation of both Virginia Woolf and her writing and its creative processes. It compliments Amy Licence's Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles: The Lives and Loves of Virginia Woolf & the Bloomsbury Group, which I've also read.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

What makes this a Superior book
is the Research.

It is evident in every chapter;
whether the person is talking to themselves; or to a group of imagined friends; to their psychotherapist; their husband; their sister; their lover; a famed poet...etc.
And every chapter contains Conversation/s...a rare jewel these days,
when most people DON'T listen and most conversations from the Mobile Broadcasters has me fleeing train or bus rather than missing my stop to find out 'What Happened Next',
whereas many a book I've had my nose in has DONE JUST THAT !!!!

The book's FULL title is ..."Adeline....A Novel Of Virginia Woolf"
This is intriguing in Itself.
For me, it gave more insight into VW than most straight biographies ever could.
And I've read Much about the Bloomsbury Group.

Norah Vincent has read the journals, letters and autobiographical works of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, as well as the letters of Lytton Strachey and T.S.Eliot;
and read excellent biographies of most Bloomsbury characters, she tells us,(see final page),
and I BELIEVE her !!!
Where else could she have got these intimate, searching and wonderful conversations!!??
Just one or two I ran aground on, but look forward to rereading them, because they hold keys to understanding. Her huge and thorough research has enabled her to get into the minds of a host of characters...especially Virginia.
This was eventually UNPUTDOWNABLE !!
I found myself regrettably getting closer to the end.

I regret my usual 'rush to judgement' which I have retained (read on!) as a Disciplinary Measure on myself ...thankfully I was holding out for a BIG improvement...and my Hopes were
rewarded...happily, surprisingly and rewardingly.

I went from 'barely reading' to "galloping through".
Hope you get to enjoy it too.
A prior knowledge of the Bloomsbury Group would be a necessary prerequisite I strongly feel.
And I can assure you there is no other biographical work like THIS one.
But there are plenty of informative and enjoyable ones.
They will definitely enhance Norah Swift's Very Original Work.

* * * *

On First Opening Norah's "Adeline":

WHEW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have just waded through the First Chapter of this overwritten bombastic prose.
A far cry from the Bloomsberries who had a reputation for speaking and writing with great simplicity ....it is their lives which are regarded as highly complicated !!!

For someone who is claiming to be channelling Virginia Woolf this does not bode well.
I needed a transfusion and went where I usually go after this rough sort of experience
....I read some "Virginia Woolf" ...and It was like a breath of Fresh Air.
AND put me in touch with The Real Thing !!

I very soon began to wonder whether this writer was not going through an early obsession with Virginia Woolf, as do some fans of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. It leads many to complete Jane's unfinished novels; or write an account of how on one of Charlotte's visits to London she witnessed a murder which led to adventure and a romance !!! Ludicrouus ? YES !
Here we have someone who is getting right inside the Someone, a Very Dubious Task .

Listen...just go to Virginia's Nephews.
They knew her personally and LOVED her, were amused by her.
Nigel Nicholson found her a lively and amusing visitor, "a favourite aunt who brightened our simple lives with unexpected questions."
Quentin Bell has written a two volume biography of this famous Aunt and it reads easily and perceptively as only an insider can.
I do hope Norah Vincent used these sources as well.
You see, I DO HOPE for an improvement.
Shame the publisher ever noticed Chapter One !!!

[Duane Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review may contain spoilers.

This novel of historical fiction focuses on the last 15 years of Woolf's life, starting in 1925 and ending in March 1941 when she took her life. It was her most productive period and saw the publication of her three most acclaimed novels; Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves.

Norah Vincent spoke in the first person of Virginia Woolf for most of the novel, which was risky because anyone familiar with Woolf's writing and the very complex workings of her mind realizes how difficult that would be. But Vincent pulls it off, at least to an acceptable level, while focusing mostly on her personal relationships and struggles. I'm not sure anyone will ever totally understand this brilliant writer, but Norah Vincent adds a fresh new look with her entertaining book that add's to the Woolf legacy.

[Amanda Patterson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This pretentious novel may find a few fans, but I am not one of them.
Adeline is described as 'a vibrant portrait of Woolf and her social circle'. The book is anything but vibrant. It is over-written, dense with predictable, cloying foreshadowing and choked with scholarly detail.
I don't believe that an author has to write in a depressing tone to show depression and I found it impossible to get past the writing style.

[nikkia neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and netgalley for arc.
This book is amazing is the most surreal sense. It will make all your senses come alive, the writing is that good at making you feel you are there with Virginia Woolf. This book also helps you to understand other books written of the time period. Its one of the best books I've read this year.

[Mieneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Virginia Woolf is one of the icons of twentieth century British literature. She and her fellow writers of the Bloomsbury Group are some of the most influential authors of the previous century and every student of English Literature has been assigned at least one of their works to read for class. As was I. As it was, I liked some of the Bloomsbury Set’s works, and those of their contemporaries, I had to read better than I did others—couldn't get through Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, really enjoyed Eliot's The Waste Land and Woolf's Into the Lighthouse, and adored E.M. Forster's A Room with a View and Howard's End. So when I discovered that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was publishing Adeline by Norah Vincent, a historical novel about Virginia Woolf focusing on her mental state and the events that drove her to choose her final journey into the Ouse, I was intrigued to read it and when I was offered a review copy I happily accepted. 

Adeline was an engaging narrative, but not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. Putting characterisation and thoughts on the reliability of the various points of view to one side, the writing and voice of the book alone required some serious acclimatisation. Vincent's prose is interesting, especially since it reminded me a lot of Woolf’s phrasing. Bearing in mind that I haven’t read any of Woolf's work since university and only Into the Lighthouse at that, Adeline's prose reminded me of those works from the era I've read and the tone was very well done. Nonetheless, it did take some getting used to it, before I managed to get immersed in the story. This isn't helped by the fact that from the start the book takes leaps in time and none of the viewpoint characters come across as particularly reliable, whether due to circumstance or mental health issues.

I liked the different points of view Vincent provided. The story is told not just through the eyes of Woolf and her husband Leonard, but we get some passages from a little further out as well, such as a particularly difficult discussion between Woolf and her family doctor and friend Dr Octavia Wilberforce from the latter’s point of view, in which her pain and feelings of frustrations at not being able to help Woolf are powerfully conveyed. Similarly, it was hard to read the scenes between Woolf and Adeline, since they are so painfully raw and emotionally vulnerable. Despite literally being a dialogue between Woolf and her younger self, these sections never felt strange and surreal; disturbing certainly, because they are the most vivid evocation of Woolf's agitated and unbalanced state of mind, but in the context of Vincent's depiction of Woolf they felt natural and served to deepen our understanding of Woolf's character and past.

Woolf isn’t exactly likeable in the narration, in fact the only one who is actually wholly sympathetic was Leonard. One could perhaps charitably say that all of the main characters in the book were truly human and thus flawed and deeply traumatised by the events of the First World War, but at least in some cases they just weren't that nice of a person and inconsiderate of those around them. Leonard is similarly flawed, but he comes across as at least wanting to do right by people and prepared to compromise on his needs and desires to keep those around him happy or, in Woolf's case, functioning.

In Adeline Vincent not just provides the reader with a portrait of Woolf's mental issues, but also shows the structure of her writing career. The book is divided in sections based on her published work and we see how – and perhaps why – Woolf returns to the same themes over and over, exploring them again and again, yet feeling that she never reaches the same heights in these explorations as she did in The Waves. I did wonder whether this idea of Woolf's was caused by her mental state or in fact added to her decline, a question that wasn't really addressed in the book.

Norah Vincent’s Adeline was a fascinating exploration of mental illness and a challenging read. Virginia Woolf’s story and in its wake the story of the Bloomsbury Set is intriguing, both due to their position in literary history and the singular characters they contain. Adeline packs a lot into its pages and it was a pleasure to discover what they held.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

[Ruthie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this would be an excellent read for those familiar with Virginia Woolf and her body of work. Having only read Mrs. Dalloway, and not being very familiar with Woolf or the Bloomsbury Group, I felt myself at a disadvantage. Many of the "characters" in this novel were familiar names; T.S Elliot, Vita Sackville-West, Yeats, Freud and many are names I feel I should know but do not. Their works are referenced; rarely by name and not being familiar with the novels/poems/essays made me feel I was missing connections and themes the author was trying to establish. Incidents in Virginia's life were often mentioned vaguely and in passing, as if I should know what she was talking about - but I didn't. Some facts were fleshed out as the novel progressed, some were not.

Reading this novel I constantly wanted to run to the library to check out other works and research the lives of people mentioned. That was annoying. I felt like I was sitting at a table with a group of people who all knew one another and were deep in conversation about past adventures I had not been a part of. That is not a bad thing, it is just a warning!

The novel seems to be trying to give insight into Woolf's writings, relationships and eventual suicide. Her mental problems are at the forefront. However until the final quarter of the novel when we hear her trying to justify her choices, there is not a real sense of how despairingly she feels. Instead we are told she isn't eating, won't leave her room, and that her husband is fearful for her mental state and safety. We see her having long discussions with her alter-ego/self as a mechanism to learn more about her life, but the conversations do not really show depression deep enough to lead to suicide. The author attempts to let us feel and understand what led Woolf to take her own life, but for me it was only Virginia's own words as she argued with friends, her frustrated sister and her friend/doctor Octavia that allowed me any understanding of how Woolf truly felt and why she chose to end her life.

I did enjoy the snippets of conversation between Virginia and her devout husband Leonard as well as those with the poet W.B Yeats. It was also astonishing how cruel the Bloomsbury Group of "friends" could be to one another - was it a by-product of being so bright or just too much time spent intellectualizing everything? I admired how even in the face of such biting remarks they could still admire the intelligence behind the insults. In such a dour novel these brief moment of humor were a relief.

I strongly suggest reading some Woolf and at least doing some research on the Bloomsbury Group before reading this novel. I think it will take this reading experience to a much more satisfying and enriching level.

All that being said I did find many of the passages where Virginia is debating issues with her husband, her friends or her doctor to be brilliant. Following Woolf's train of thought was quite exhilarating and I could tell that an enormous amount of research had been undertaken by the author. I am definitely inspired to read more Woolf.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, so far. I tried to listen to this once and gave up, lost in a sea of words and impressions that seemed to me to strain too much towards an imitation of Woolf's lyricism without her tightly girded understructure. The second time, it took better, and I found parts of it interesting and moving. It is a professional book, in the sense that the author has for the most part done her research. At times, as in the scene btw Woolf and Strachey when they discuss Elizabeth and Essex, Vincent is able to synthesize a great deal of material quite deftly in a way that suggests real insight. However, I found the last couple of chapters increasingly annoying. For one thing, Vincent seems to need to transpose her fangirl appreciation of Yeats onto Virginia, and for me the idea that Woolf was constantly mulling over her status in relation to Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce seems more of an excuse to work in salient quotations from "great men" than to really honor Woolf's concerns. Yes, she did occasionally compare herself to Eliot and resent the Olympian authority with which he held forth in his criticism, but she was some ten years older than he was, and the diaries show that she saw through him psychologically in quite a sensitive way. The idea that she was agonizing over her literary reputation as she was writing her suicide notes is, in fact, quite nauseating.

I also take umbrage at the treatment of her suicide as a rebellion/ panic at the prospect of being institutionalized -- a literalization of her identification with the character Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway that I find far far too artistically convenient. It was 1941, not 1923, and any "rest homes" had very probably been turned over to taking care of wounded soldiers. It seems quite clear to me that Woolf knew she was headed for another serious bout and that the burden of caring for her would fall exclusively on the shoulders of her husband and her sister as there was no place to send her and no private nurses available for hire because of the war effort. I feel that the arguments in favor of suicide that Vincent invents are far too existential and ignore Woolf's real anquish at the trouble she was about to cause for the people she loved the most.

Still, it was worth reading, and I am going back to listen to it again to see if I will absorb more detail this time around.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adeline was Virginia Stephen’s given first name, but as it was her dead aunt’s name, it hurt her mother too much to use it. So she was Virginia from the start. In this novelized biography of the last fifteen years of Woolf’s life, Adeline exists inside Virginia her whole life as a separate personality to absorb the abuse she endured from her step-brother and to deal with emotionally upsetting events. Virginia talked to Adeline as if she existed outside of her body.

Written mainly from Virginia’s point of view in the present tense, Vincent has done a good job of allowing the reader a look at how Virginia might have felt at times when she held conversations with her younger self and with friends who had died. The times when mania was setting in are particularly suffocating and uncomfortable. Her novels tended to be based on experiences she or her friends & family had, and writing them was rather painful. In a lot of ways, Virginia Woolf never grew up and she needed people- mostly her husband, Leonard Woolf, and her sister Vanessa (Nessa) Bell – to take care of her even during her good times. Very fragile emotionally, she was treated like a precious egg that could break easily. From this book I get the feeling she never knew a moment’s peace from her demons.

The style of writing is rather wordy and full of similes; very unlike most prose of today. It put me in mind of Woolf’s own writing and I’m sure this was deliberate on the part of the author since we spend most of the novel inside Woolf’s head. While it made for rough going at times, I feel that ultimately it helped sustain the feeling of intimacy with Woolf’s thought. I have to say that while I’ve enjoyed other books about Woolf and the Bloomsbury group more than this one, I did enjoy this book and feel it’s a worthy addition to the growing shelf of books about that group. It also has given me an urge to know more about W.B. Yeats, as he comes off in this book as a jovial mystic.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually 4.5/5

Adeline by Norah Vincent is an exceptional account of Virginia Woolf’s life from 1925 up to the events leading to her suicide in 1941, including the vibrant social circle she was apart of, known as the Bloomsbury Group, allowing the readers not only a look within the mind of Virginia Woolf, but also into the lives of Leonard Woolf, T.S. and Vivienne Eliot, Lytton Strachey, and Dora Carrington. Vincent recounts the time when Adeline ceases to be referred to as Adeline, but rather by her middle name, Virginia, allowing the readers to glimpse Virginia’s younger self and alter ego Adeline. Vincent’s rich and profuse prose draws the reader gently into this rather detailed and at times disturbing life of Virginia Woolf. I found Adeline to be immensely enjoyable and informative not only in regards to Virginia’s life, but also in regards to those in the Bloomsbury Group. Vincent has clearly done her research and appears to effortlessly draw the reader into the psyche of Adeline/Virginia, which truth be told, is not always a pleasant place to be, yet one that is utterly fascinating. Adeline reads like a melodic memoir, and yet one must remember this is indeed a fictional account of Virginia’s life. I was unable to set the book down and I highly recommend Adeline to anyone who is intrigued by Virginia Woolf’s life.

[Kim Barke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adeline is an emotionally gripping novel about Virginia Woolf and her struggles with depression, creativity, family, and friends. It is the most psychologically insightful book I have ever read. The author, Norah Vincent, is remarkably empathetic, especially in her scenes between Virginia and Leonard. Vincent is most likely drawing from her own struggles with mood issues, which she's also written about. Here the interplay between mood and creativity becomes a matter of life or death for Virginia. The reader is able to feel this edge and enter into one of literature's most creative and brilliant minds. That Vincent is also able to write in a voice so similar to Virginia's is a testament to her extraordinary talent and makes the book an essential read for those who crave great writing. If you've ever wondered what it might feel like to inhabit the mind of the genius who brought us To the Lighthouse and the Waves, read this important book. While it isn't available until April 7th, it's not too soon to preorder a copy on Amazon.com

[Soozblooz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many reviewers opine this novel is overwritten, but if so, it is beautifully overwritten; some passages are breathtaking in both prose and thought. Ms. Vincent does seem to be channeling Virginia Woolf, and I was, indeed, intimidated. I could have easily stopped several times per page to look up unfamilar words, but I did not or I would still be reading and not, necessarily, enjoying.

I tell a lie: I did look up one word: crepitation. It means a crackling sound or, in medicine, a raspy sound in the chest. It's a noun that does not exist as an adverb, as in crepitatious.

The reason for 4 stars rather than 5 is that as Virginia nears taking her life, a chorus of Bloomsbury friends peoples her head, at turns funny, snarky, and (it seems) egging her on. For some reason I simply couldn't grasp what was going on; it would have helped to have some background on these friends. Many years ago, I read THE LETTERS OF VITA SACKVILLE-WEST TO VIRGINIA WOOLF as well as PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE: VITA SACKVILLE-WEST AND HAROLD NICOLSON, so luckily I had some understanding of the Bloomsbury group but not nearly enough.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received Adeline as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

Adeline is the story of Virginia Woolf, a series of glimpses into her life during the decade and a half prior to her suicide by drowning. We see her struggles with mental illness (including protracted interactions with her younger self), the string of relationships (both romantic and otherwise) that defined her personal and professional life, and are generally enmeshed in the world of this literary giant and her peers.

Parts of the story were fascinating to me. Her interactions with well-known names like Yeats and Eliot, but also her relationship with her husband, her sister, and other women were all very well-drawn. However, not having a lot of personal experience with mental illness, that part of the story didn't really resonate with me. I'm not sure if the fault lies with the author or with the reader, but I just couldn't connect to it, or to Virginia, while she was in the midst of despair. Not a bad read, but its narrative distance/reserve caused me some struggles.

[Bored · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to love Adeline as I do any novel about Virginia Woolf. From a first glance, Norah Vincent had her act together, and I had hope. She prefaced the novel with an excerpt from Hermione Lee's biography detailing the history of the name Adeline. Vincent herself is a freelance journalist with a New York Times bestselling book (Self Made Man), so I trusted her to work well with the factual aspects of the novel.

She began the novel with a Woolfian style description of Virginia bathing, which made me yearn for a long bubble bath. I soon recognized that Vincent was trying to do two things--pull in as much historical detail as possible while using Woolf's writing style, and she pulled this off in the first few pages. But then, she turned a corner or stepped over a line or faded the line. I'm still not certain how to categorize what happened. She developed an entire scene of Virginia Woolf lying on a bed having a conversation with her imaginary self as a child, a child that Vincent would consistently refer to as Adeline. This, for me, was when things began to fall apart. As a Woolf scholar with a focus on the fact and fictions of Woolf's mental health, this portrayal betrayed my trust in Vincent, especially as Adeline is portrayed as the alter-ego of Virginia with fascinations toward death. Yes, Virginia Woolf heard voices, but at no time did she mention hallucinating her younger self. So Vincent takes the idea of hallucinations and turns these into an apparently lifelong hallucination of her younger self, which blurs the line of writing Virginia Woolf's life as a fictional tale. I was able to tolerate this blurring at this point, but later it becomes infuriating (and I'll get to that in a few more words).

Vincent's attempt to blend fiction and history comes off well in some places, but there are several places where she clearly wants to get information across but isn't certain how to work that information into her Woolfian style. Her solution is to place large blocks of historical fact as dialogue in the mouths of her characters in a most awkward fashion and in such a way that it's clear her purpose was not to further the dialogue but to get across the factual information.

There are also points where Vincent seems to lose sight of what she's doing. After spending an extensive amount of time detailing Virginia's loathing of Freud and psychoanalysis at the end of a chapter, she promptly begins the next chapter by psychoanalyzing Virginia's relationship with Vita Sackville-West. What's worse is the fact that she boils the relationship down to Virginia's desire to be intimate with her mother and sister, portraying Vita as a woman dumb as a post and only part of Virginia's life to (unknowingly) fulfill this sexual need. So, Vincent does not understand the relationship between Virginia and Vita well enough to portray this factually; she did not do the research to see the relationship (or did not care enough to portray it factually because it did not fit her idea for the book).

Vincent does something similar with Dora Carrington's suicide. In Vincent's retelling, Virginia (via the young Adeline) is responsible for Carrington's suicide. Vincent keeps with the factual narrative that Carrington saw no reason to live after Lytton Strachey's death; however, after this fact, she moves into a fictional account of the last encounter with Virginia that drives Carrington over the edge. According to Vincent, Carrington asked Virginia if she knew of any reason for her to carry on and Virginia (suddenly overcome by the possession of Adeline) answered no. Vincent continues with this blame by leaving a scrap of paper visible in the house when Carrington's body was found, a scrap of paper with the lines from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men/ “Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!" only the word Dog is replaced--and underlined--with the word wolf, clearly proving that in Vincent's fictional world, Virginia is responsible for Carrington's death.

Finally, there is Virginia's suicide. I often complain that Virginia's suicide is romanticized as are so many artists' suicides, but I cannot raise that complaint about Vincent's portrayal in that way. Vincent does romanticize her suicide to an extent (specifically in Virginia pouring a vial of milk over a rock in reference to a Yeats poem), but the suicide as a whole is a bizarre series of hallucinations which, obviously, has no foundation in the reality of Virginia's suicide. From the point that Virginia begins writing her suicide notes to the time when she wades into the Ouse, Virginia is in hallucinatory conversation with multiple people--T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Yeats all make appearances in these last minutes. More disturbing, though, is the idea that young Adeline is there gleefully waiting for the death of her older self. Of all the people Virginia hallucinates, Adeline is the one that frustrates me the most. Part of that frustration is borne from the continued idea that Virginia hallucinated her younger self for her entire life and that her suicide is, essentially, the fault of her younger self. Vincent falls prey to the idea that Virginia's suicide was the result of her madness, and she furthers this idea with the hallucinations. In fact, a reading of Virginia's suicide notes shows clarity in her words and no hint of mental illness or hallucinations, but Vincent avoids showing by having Virginia suddenly return from a hallucinatory conversation to discover she's finished a suicide note).

I do not doubt that Vincent is a good writer, but as a freelance journalist I expected her to be more faithful to the facts. There are many ways to write Virginia's life as a fiction and maintain a faithful duty to the facts, but Vincent has not done this in her novel. I could have tolerated this book a lot more had Vincent decided to write a novel about a fictional author and her fictional set of friends. In that case, all my earlier objections would be taken back; however, Vincent blends fact and fiction in such a way here (and it's obvious that some of this is fact) that an unsuspecting reader who indulges in the book will need a lot of correcting to truly understand Virginia's life.

[Ray Palen · Rating 3 out of 5]

To begin with, if you are not fully versed in the writing --- and writing style --- of the late Virginia Woolf you need not enter.

For those still with me, author Norah Vincent has put together a challenging, often dense but ultimately rewarding novel that fictionalizes real events and characters to depict the mind-set and possible motivations that would a great writer at the top of her game fill her pockets with rocks and drown herself in the River Ouse.

Fans of Woolf as well as those who enjoyed the book/film THE HOURS will really appreciate this one.

[Stephanie]

Deeply disappointing book: I felt concerns within the first few pages, and finally gave up on it halfway through. It is the only book I have ever returned for a refund. To me, it is as reminiscent of Woolf's style as crayon writing on the wall is to calligraphy: it has none of Woolf's intelligence, empathy or sympathy. It tries to use Woolf's voice to roam through rumors, clichés, and criticisms of Woolf's life. I did read the ending, to see how Vincent handled Woolf's suicide and felt disgust. I feel like Virginia Woolf's life and death are thoroughly muddied by this book.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Slowly, slowly comes the blackness with its burning edge-glow eating inward to the center until all the parchment of her right mind is consumed and there is nothing but ash.” (p.4)

“Distress. The dress.” (p.6)

"The perception of the world as it is, the phantasm, the flare of the visionary idea is flattened to a page by the male intellect. Controlled, categorized, c-a-t-a-l-o-g-u-e-d.” (p.7)

“Pat the head of your feral wife” (p.8)

“She is where she is, and where she is you cannot follow.” (p.10)

“She knows the ciphers of my brain, just as she knows the secret speech of rocks and trees and the language of the light on them.” (p.11)

“The trick, the quickness, is in the fingers, hinging tirelessly above the stylus like some huge and bloodless insect spinning out worlds.” (p.17)

“The new physics, the new economics, stymied alike by inconsistency. Mass or the masses, same difficulty, neither the universe nor the populace behaves predictably.” (p.36)

“I must keep on from where I began, invent and reinvent a method, a new composition that can communicate this vision.” (p.64)

“Old astronomy, old art, old medicine,” she asserts, driving home the previous point, but with much more control. They are the same blunt instruments.” (p.66)

". . . scatological charlatan . . .” (p.66)

“We reduce this thing we are reaching for to our limited terms, and in doing so, we are merely aping” (p.67)

“For all her flaws and failings, all her hardships of staying by and righting her, there is this: She knows herself. She knows that she is vain. What’s more, she has turned that awareness on itself. She is making art of it- and science and metaphysics too. Talking with her this way ameliorates everything. Without bodies, it is how they make love.” (p.68)

“And so it is with Vita, true to the aristocratic line, where it seemed that titanic mustachioed women so often towered above their milquetoast men and outweighed them by fifty pounds. Surely this must have been the reason for the invention of the top hat, and come to think of it, the Victorian gentleman’s muttonchops – one could not, after all, be quite so outfaced by one’s queen.” (p.83)

“A book is a fold of paper and thread, in itself inert, yet in the right hands, it transmits.” (p.86)
“Life goes on, as they say, but something of us does not go with it. It gets left behind somehow, and the separation always gapes.” (p.105)

“The shattered self, the sharded self, the self that does not walk in this world.” (p.111)

“But I must go on now, she reminds herself, crafting the new dream, starting again from nothing.” (p.113)

“We love – we need to peep through the pinhole in the wall, and not just at anyone or anything, but ourselves.” (p.113)

“For this is what I do, she thinks. I break myself each time in the trying, because I can do nothing else. I want nothing else.” (p.114)

“Her eyes roam happily, gorging themselves on the scenery, which acts on her like a tincture of absinthe; floats her in the shallows of its emerald dream but never quite puts her to sleep.” (p.134)

“The body says everything” (p.145)

“Art that is made to serve politics – or worse, civics- is, she feels, bad art. A glorification of the gasworks is not a poem. It is as simple as that.” (p.153)

“…the profound mysticism of everyday life.” (p.160)

“She is looking down into her most isolated self.” (p.169)

“She is working harder than a dung beetle, yet she has nothing to show for it but dung.” (p.173)

I feel myself shining in the dark.” (p.178)

“There are many more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.” (p.184)

“She had looked at him then with all the gratitude of a lifetime, which had owed its extension, each bleak and obstreperous time, to moments, to gestures such as these. But with his usual grace and exquisite kindness, he had merely narrowed his eyes at her and blinked: There is no need, my love, no need.” (p.197)

“All the greatest works of art were failures by definition. By design. This was the whole purpose and nature of art, to fail, for art was and could only ever be futile and moribund. That was what made it shine in the darkness.” (p.265)

“A single stroke of the brush comes closer to conveying the real thing than reams of written words could ever do.” (p.274)

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that got my blood up not only for its quite amazing ability to resurrect a fictional but quite realistic-seeming Virginia Woolf but almost equally for its ability to raise my blood to boiling, nearly, about the personal balance I feel the need to weigh when it comes to artistic talent and its close ties to opportunity, representation, and other less seemly things like classism and popular sentiment and shared prejudices amongst the powerful. Still, this review is not about my opinions of Woolf and her privileged life, her prodigious talents notwithstanding.Though I would be remiss in not stating that I am a firm believer that many amazing and gifted humans never got the chance to exist, let alone exhibit their gifts because of the hatred, prejudice, and outright awfulness of those who spent their lives simultaneously taking any-and everything like it was theirs and denying those same things to any and all they felt inferior for whatever stupidass racist-sexist-homophobic-classist reason they wanted to make up at any moment. Anyway. Vincent succeeds admirably here in bringing life, albeit a fictional and yet quite based in facts, to the author Virginia Woolf. A book that had me looking up things, which always make me furiously happy. So I know more about the characters of Woolf's social circle than I would have ever thought I would care to know. Kudos! I will say I felt the 'Adeline' concept (?) a bit underutilized, or at least underwhelming. For me, the thread that runs rampant through this book, and Woolf's too, is the inability to escape death, even the fear of wanting to embrace it, maybe. A sense of energy expended, weight applied, to keeping at bay the desired result which is escape from the difficulty of life, of living, of being alive, of others and their demands to stay alive. Much of this book is taken up with "society tripe" (my term), and while it fits the narrative and has its interesting bits, I found it tiresome after a while and longed for the parts where Virginia is alone and musing and raving and expostulating and, I think, suffering life. A grand and ambitious novel that won't work if you don't like Woolf and/or don't like the style of writing that Woolf brought to the literary fore. A challenging read for me on many levels.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the past week, I've been "keeping up" with Adeline, Vincent's book on Woolf. This deliberate voyeurism is as intoxicating as it is disturbing. Reading this text is like eavesdropping on Virginia's Woolf's thoughts and private conversations, not just guessing but being privy to her insecurities, arrogance, cruelty (kind of), crimes against her, and her intense love of friends and family, her battles, and her curiosity.

There's this long passage that "got" me, a passage that explains our need for literature or even art:
I won't quote the entire thing, but here's a slip of it: "We love -- we need to peep through the pinhole in the wall, and not just at anything or anyone, but ourselves" ( 113). Isn't that what we do?

You know, I promised myself that I wouldn't cry at that inevitable ending, but I did. I grieved for a woman who died almost 80 years ago. So how does one grieve for a dead woman, or I guess the better question is, why?

I grieve because I feel like I know her. I have this intimate knowledge of her, mentally and emotionally. She occupies space in my mind, and the lease is long term. This is because of my past study of her life and novels, and Vincent reassures that knowledge. Since my "bullshit detector" as Hemingway coined, on Woolf is strong, and I am protective of her and her legacy, I was suspicious of how carefully Vincent might tread. But she pulls it off. Through shear style and beautiful, precise prose, she carries the reader to the edge and back, and she does this by writing with honesty and a lack of "groupie" sentimentality. This book is a gift. It feels like the truth, or the truth as Vincent knows it.

The dialogue between Woolf, Leonard, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Vivienne Eliot, and Vanessa is so beautifully written, never tiresome and tedious, but elastic, natural, and fluid-- as if Vincent were there, a ladybug on a branch, silently taking notes. And this text is intuitive and reveals her battle with Woolf to get to the core.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

A psychological insight into of the life of author Virginia Woolf. This intimate story of Adeline/Virginia, one of the famed Bloomsbury group, which included great creative minds such as T. S. Eliot and Lytton Strachey, explores her state of mind in the years before her suicide and her relationships with the other members of the Bloomsbury group.
Virginia suffered from dark moods, debilitating headaches and painful menstrual symptoms. When “unwell” she shut herself up in her bedroom and had lengthy conversations with her youthful alter ego, Adeline. It is not clear if she was ever diagnosed as being a schizophrenic, but her symptoms certainly give the impression that she was suffering from this mental condition.. A period of sexual abuse during her childhood by a member of her family may have triggered this mental breakdown. Although, it is not certain how much of the abuse was real and how much imagination, as Virginia was given to frequent melodramatic outbursts, it is certain that the abuse precipitated her depression and her fear of sexual intimacy.
She does not come across as a likable character in this book. She was spiteful, attention seeking and selfish. Her relationship with her artist sister, Nessa was complicated, veering from adoration to vitriolic sibling jealousy. Her apparently unconsummated marriage was a partnership of convenience for her, her final act of suicide; leaving her loving, selfless, ever-attentive husband, Leonard, her “rock”; bereft and alone. Her excuse that she was freeing him from caring for her felt to me like a poor excuse for her self-indulgent action.
An intimate, insightful view into the life of a famous 19th Century author, ‘Adeline’ is exceptionally well- written until the final chapters, which I found too dense, pretentious and over-written.
A worthwhile read; an enlightening portrait of the life of a complex woman.