Olivia's Reviews > Virginia Woolf

My reading of this biography was interrupted by my reading of Viviane Forrester's biography. I do not recommend this interruption, but I opened one page of Forrester and could not stop: Forrester's book is superior to any biography I've ever read.

Though Hermione Lee is a master biographer, and obviously poured a lifetime of research and careful objectivity into this biography - which Forrester must have referenced for her own work - I did not enjoy returning to it.

Lee's work is an accounting of sorts, like reading a summary of every sentence left by Virginia Woolf. Forrester, on the other hand, pulls you into an acute and vicious analysis; I could not tear away from it for the two days I took to read it - and I only took two days because I was sad that it was ending. Lee's biography is obviously also sad, but it mourns the account left of Virginia Woolf without forcefully countering it. Neither book deserves less than 5 stars, but Forrester's at least gives you a fighting feeling.

So that's my personal reading - my advice is finish Lee, then read Forrester, and don't bother with any biographer other than those two.