Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar

This remarkable novel rivets my attention for several reasons, its interesting and challenging format, its fascinating cast of characters, and its marvelous execution.

Priya Parmar has chosen as format for her novel a set of entries from the diary of Vanessa Bell, older sister of Virginia Woolf, with letters, postcards, and telegrams by Vanessa, Virginia, and other members of their social circle who became known as the Bloomsbury group-with an occasional train or boat ticket. The cast of characters is, of course, the Bloomsbury group, a coterie of artists and intellectuals who gathered around Vanessa and her siblings.

In addition to the four Stephen siblings-brothers Thoby and Adrian, sisters Vanessa and Virginia-the circle of friends and acquaintances included Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes. They are a diverse and brilliant group who changed how Britain and American think about art, literature, culture, economics. They were self-conscious rebels against social mores and artistic standards of their day. Roger Bell championed Expressionism in art when Impressionism reigned. Much later Keynes famously changed how the world thinks about the economic role of government. Virginia Woolf we all know. Their love lives ignored the standards of the day.

At the very beginning, Parmar presents us with a letter from Virginia to Vanessa, dated at the end of the period covered by the novel, in which Virginia asks her older sister "Am I still lovable? Or have I undone that now?" The novel proper then begins on February 23, 1905. It ends seven years later with a letter by Virginia, giving her answer. The novel provides a full intellectual, emotional, cultural context for that question and its response.

Parmar has set herself a daunting challenge-to create believable fictional diary entries and letters by this set of brilliant thinker and writers. She succeeds admirably. The human relationships are fully imagined. The language is always fresh.