Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers

If you love Virginia Woolf, like I do, you probably think that no one can ever write a book as masterfully crafted as To the Lighthouse. You're right, but you may enjoy this one.

Vanessa and Virginia is meant to be read as a letter from Vanessa Bell to Virginia Woolf after the latter's suicide. Sellers assumes that her readers know the full background of Bell and Woolf, and their relationship, so do your homework before you start this novel, especially since Sellers writes in second person point-of -view, which tends to read like listening to one side of a telephone conversation.

Sellers is very clearly paying homage to Woolf's work, and Bell's role in it. Scenes from Vanessa and Virginia seem lifted almost entirely, word for word, from To the Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway. It's humbling to see one artist another in this way, but it is not to Sellers' advantage. She is an excellent writer; her prose is beautifully formed and her taking up the challenge of writing in second person well-met. But let her give us something different, something original. This is her first novel. I am eager to read the second.

Sellers, Susan. Vanessa and Virginia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 224 pp.