The problem with my local library is I go in for one book and then see ten others I’ve been intending to read, and then they let me have them for free. And so I finally got around to reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
The actual plot is pretty well known, and it turns out I could have summarised it before reading the novel itself: Orlando is an Elizabethan nobleman who suffers disappointments as both a lover and a writer. He leaves England for Constantinople, where Orlando is changed into a woman. She isn’t particularly bothered by this transformation and returns to England where she lives primarily as a woman. Eventually, she falls in love with a man who has undergone a similar transformation and finally finds success as a poet. Orlando is mysteriously long-lived – as a man, he only reached the age of around 30 although a teenaged favourite of Elizabeth I would have been much older before being dispatched as ambassador by Charles I. As a woman, she doesn’t reach the age of 36 until 1928.
The plot doesn’t go much deeper than that, which is the true pleasure of the book. Unlike a lot of early queer or queer-themed novels, Orlando isn’t miserable, brooding, or self-loathing. Instead, we get a drily funny whistlestop tour of English social history and literary establishment throughout the ages with a narrator who is by and large doing exactly as they please and seeking out happiness. Although Orlando lacks the same intimacy with the narrator that often features in other Woolf stories, Orlando the character is a total delight.
If you’re not used to reading 1920s literature it will take a little while to get warmed up to, but once you get into the swing of it I think anyone could love this book.
