Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Vintage Classics

9780099478287

224pp

Who would have thought Virginia Woolf could be so funny? Orlando, her gender-bending tale of an Elizabethan man traversing centuries, is, frankly, hilarious. Okay, okay, so a lot of Woolf readers could have told me that she was funny. But the thought of reading Orlando initially daunted me. Woolf struck me as this terribly serious literary giant (which she is) and thus her books would be dense and depressing. Much like a Dickens (don’t get me started!)

Instead, we are swept into Orlando’s world through a wry grin and plenty of good humour. The lavish Elizabethan court sparkles as much as it disappoints, and Orlando himself is a fantastic protagonist, taking himself far too seriously to ever be taken seriously at all. I knew very little of this book going into reading it; I haven’t even seen the 1992 film starring Tilda Swinton. But I knew that if I was going to read any Woolf, it had to be one of her most famous works.

Orlando is often seen as a love letter to Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, and indeed the book is dedicated to her. It’s reputed that Orlando is based on Vita too. And you can see the affection pouring off the page. Orlando is described with such care and attention, and with the softness of their personality, they are what we would consider a Romantic. It’s sweet.

Orlando strides through the Elizabethan court until he becomes an ambassador to Turkey. There, after much carousing and even a rumoured wedding, Orlando wakes up a woman. Orlando the woman goes on to survive the ensuing centuries walking the fine line between the sexes. We see her fall in love in the Victorian era, and eventually we see her reach her end in the 20th Century. But her end (I’m reluctant to call it death) is just as soft as Orlando’s nature. It is bittersweet and melancholic, and all those things we wish for a good ending.

But in these 200-and-something pages, this book is a witty romp of all that is wrong and all that is right with British history. There are no rose-tinted glasses here, but rather an energetic lampooning of the cliché of each era. Don’t get me wrong, there is some questionable language choices (as we would deem it), and there are some rather uncomfortable parodies, but for the most part this is every bit a joyous love letter indeed.

I thoroughly enjoyed Orlando, and am eager for my next Woolf book.