This Devastating Fever

by Sophie Cunningham

Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: was the world’s technology about to crash down around her? The world’s technology did not crash. But there were worse disasters to come: Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague.

Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury set, colonial administrator, publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the twentieth century becomes something else altogether.

Complex, heartfelt, darkly funny and deeply moving, this is Sophie Cunningham’s most important book to date – a dazzlingly original novel about what it’s like to live through a time that feels like the end of days, and how we can find comfort and answers in the past.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Australia, Literary Fiction, Historical, Book Club

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2022

About the author

Sophie Cunningham is the author of six books including City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest (Text, 2020). She is also the editor of the collection Fire, Flood, Plague: Australian writers respond to 2020 (Vintage, 2020).

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ambitious and often inventive, Sophie Cunningham’s novel opens well but I never felt it lived up to its initial promise. It uses shifting timelines to follow Australian writer Alice who’s struggling to complete a novel about Leonard Woolf. It’s a project about the past that Alice hopes will also reveal something about her own present, partly influenced by her fascination with Geoff Dyer’s idiosyncratic account of his attempts to write about D. H. Lawrence. Alice’s idea of Leonard is as someone who lived through moments of immense change and upheaval from the waning of the British Empire, to war to global pandemic, and someone, perhaps, whose journey might serve as a commentary on her own uncertain era.

There’s a definite metafictional aspect to Cunningham’s story. Although Cunningham’s distanced herself from her fictional creation in many ways Alice comes across as a version of Cunningham: both queer, white Australians; both engaged for over sixteen years in trying to craft a challenging work of fiction. At first this moves unpredictably between Alice and Leonard, gradually building towards Alice’s days in lockdown during the early months of Covid, Alice and Leonard both increasingly aware that they inhabit precarious worlds which may be hurtling towards extinction. But eventually their lives intersect, with ghost Leonard (and sometimes ghost Virginia) popping up here and there to enter into dialogues with Alice.

A great deal of space’s given over to Leonard as a colonial administrator in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), something which seems to have made an indelible impression on him. These sections of the narrative have been criticised for their centring of Leonard’s “white gaze” and their failure to adequately address Leonard’s (and Virginia’s) complicated relationship with imperialism and racism. It’s a valid criticism in many ways, certainly Cunningham’s storyline featuring apologetic, white liberal Alice’s visit to Sri Lanka to research her book does very little to counter it or launch a convincing critique of Leonard’s conflicted views around colonialism. But, after reading this, I think part of the problem is that Cunningham has weighed her story down with so many complex issues that it’s not possible for any one of them to be properly considered.

Although there are numerous lucid and engaging passages there’s just too much packed into this. Cunningham brings in reflections on climate change and environmental blight including Australia’s extreme weather conditions; refugee crises; violence against women; gender and sexuality; Covid; Spanish Flu; war; imperialism; anti-Semitism; the rise of fascism; sickness and being a carer; the nature of time; fractured families; as well as an ongoing discussion of the process of writing, being an author and striving for success in an increasingly competitive industry. All of this in not much more than 200 pages. As the story unfolds it also starts to feel increasingly conventional, Cunningham’s clearly grounded her piece in extensive research but the later sections - which rehash key events in Leonard and Virginia’s lives together – come across as thinly-veiled biography in the guise of fiction. Yet, despite its flaws, it’s a surprisingly readable, often thought-provoking, novel even if I didn’t find it a particularly satisfying one. It's also one I think will appeal to readers like me with an interest in Bloomsbury and the Woolfs.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Ultimo Press for an ARC

Rating: 2 to 2.5

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cunningham comprehensively answers the question as to why she hasn’t published fiction in 15 years – she has been wrestling this beast. The struggles of the author Alice are embedded into the narrative in a multi-layered meta self-referential post-modern display. If you’re interested in the Bloomsbury Set, and specifically the Woolfs, you’re in for a real treat. If you can keep up with who was sleeping with whom well done. I like fiction that uses the archives in modern ways and I’m looking forward to hearing Cunningham speak to the researching of this book. I’m always interested in characters who haunt their authors. The moments in history we live through might feel like they define us until we realise those moments have happened before and will happen again. A dazzling wry novel that feels bold and brave.

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cunningham tackles all the big issues in this one and shows how little has changed in the last century. War, plague, dear, loss, the writer’s creative struggle are explored and developed through Cunningham’s compelling narrative to complete ‘This Devastating Fever’ alongside her fictional persona Alice’s journey to produce a form of biography of Leonard Woolf.

Being a fan of the ‘Bloomsberries’ will make this a fascinating but bumpy excursion into meta biography with its tricksy rabbit holes, melding of fact and fiction and drawing of parallels between the world of the Woolfs and our own. Only climate change and its consequences are absent in the case of the former.

Another example of the strength of current Australian writing on offer - read this alongside Robbie Arnott’s ‘Limberlost’ for an intriguing pairing.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up.

I have been thinking about this book ever since I closed the back cover and I have no idea how to review it except to say that it captured me from page one and didn't let go. Cunningham spent something like 18 years working on this novel, dipping in and out, writing and re-writing it seems, finally finishing it during the pandemic lockdowns in Melbourne.

Drawing on her own experiences as an author, researcher, and more, Cunningham has written a non-linear tale about a writer questioning today's world (pandemic, bushfire, climate change etc.) and writing about Leonard Wolfe (and less so about Virginia and the Bloomsbury set). Cleverly weaving quotes from archival material into the fictional account she constantly made me question the relationship between fiction and non-fiction. This book has so much going on, there are visiting ghosts, poignant comments about the publishing industry in Australia today, observations on colonialism, the role of history, amazing characters, interesting relationships and so very much more. And although this all sounds like it should be too much, in fact it wasn't as, for me, it all came together in a wonderful, insightful novel that I will continue to think about and will certainly get off the shelf to read again in the near future.

[David Rider · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is phenomenal. Unlike anything I’ve ever read; maybe Lincoln in the Bardo comes closest in the ghost story elements. But it’s so much more: the specificity of this present era of disease, colonialism, war, climate disaster; and the timelessness of these themes throughout the last 120 years. It asks what roles art and fiction can play in the face of certain world death, and doesn’t provide simple answers. We are all suffering writer’s block in 2022.

I fell in love with Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and I wish their ghosts would come visit me.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read this year.

One thing that did bother me: on page 251, the author uses the term 'neuralgia' when alluding to delusions. However, neuralgia refers to pain (severe, often debilitating) caused by irritation or damage to the nerves. I'm not aware of a relationship between neuralgia and delusions but am happy to be corrected?

Overall, a gorgeous, interesting, relevant novel.

[Rusha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gorgeous, generous book. Well worth the wait.

[Cat Colwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get myself interested in this. I almost certainly stopped before giving it "a fair go", but I just found the narrative stifling. Not for me.

[Jennifer Severn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it's just me but I started to feel, about halfway through, that Cunningham was just making it up as she went along. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But did she set out to write a book about the Woolfs, not have enough material, then decide to write about an author who wants to write a book about the Woolfs? A book that's called 'This Devastating Fever'? It was lockdown time in Melbourne, making it hard to access libraries or travel to the UK for research. I didn't mind the timeshifts but wasn't so keen on the apparitions.

[Scott Baird (Gunpowder Fiction and Plot) · Rating 2 out of 5]

An experimental novel, that like almost all experimental novels didn't work. Experiments for experiments sake, kind of like Virginia Woolf really.

[Catie · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘This Devastating Fever’ is quite a ride! Self-reflexive, funny, anxious and in a sort of in-between of fiction and non-fiction. But it’s definitely a novel.

It’s a book about a writer (Alice) struggling to write a book about the life of Leonard Woolf, and also a book about Leonard Woolf. As that implies it deals with some of the struggles of writing biographically, and depicting real complex people on a page, which I really loved. By turns you get quotations from diaries and factual footnotes full of background info, written out third person historical fiction narrative about the Woolfs and their contemporaries, Alice’s reflections on the Woolfs and the appearance of Leonard and later Virginia as ghosts who argue with Alice about their representation and give her background insights into their lives.

‘This Devastating Fever’ is also a pandemic novel, as the writer spends around 20 years writing her book and that takes in the pandemic, as seen through Melbourne’s lockdowns. But also: climate change, fires, floods, colonialism, me too, the mouse plagues, fascism, refugees and Sri Lanka’s political instability. That all got a bit too much as it sort of snowballed toward the end, but at the same time isn’t that accurate to the experience of living through the last few years? She throws a lot of historical parallels in there, while winking at them a bit, which shows just how precedented our unprecedented times really are.

It’s a very different book but I was reminded a bit of Emily St John Mandel’s ‘Sea of Tranquility’, which both include self-insert characters and both sort of make you feel as though COVID has broken the very structure of the novel. Similar to ‘The Sentence’ by Louise Erdrich as well in that regard. There are also snippets in ‘This Devastating Fever’ of Alice wondering about whether fiction has a future at all- and I kind of like how these books sort of fracture under the weight of trying to represent the chaotic present. Personally I believe the novel is doing very well (though I can’t vouch for the well-being of the authors).

[Kate Downey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraordinary!
If Virginia Woolf appears, I will be there and Cunningham served her up in a delightfully distilled quantity. So distilled that she was really no more than fumes. We are more interested in Leonard for this novel and what a fascinating entry into the whole emotional and physical landscape that the Woolfs inhabited. The novel flips between the current world with its covid lockdowns and climate devastation, Leonard's time in then Ceylon as a diplomat and the Woolfs' post Spanish 'flu' pre-war life.
In the contemporary timeline, a rather jaded novelist is trying to wrangle her manuscript about Leonard Woolf over the finishing line and suffers the rather benign haranguing of her agent, the complications of a relative in an aged care facility that has a covid outbreak, and the continual harassment or encouragement of both revenant Woolfs. Leonard is rather charming. Virginia is brittle. Neither is predictable. In death as in life, we can suppose.
Cunningham visits the atrocities of war, the idealism of the novelist, the facade of propriety fronting many of society marriages as well as the blatant flouting of convention, the abnegation of self to other or to art, the devastating fever that is sex, the destruction of ways of being caused by ignorance (especially culturally - that is the devastation wreaked by colonialism), and the necessity of confronting missteps in order to confer or receive peace.
I liked that we are made to infer Cunningham's point. She expects her reader to do some work. This is classy stuff.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read Sophie Cunningham’s nonfiction and she writes very well. This attempt at fiction/nonfiction has received the highest praise. I found it enlightening about the Woolfs: it is a biography of the less well know husband Leonard of Virginia Woolf; I also liked, but not so much, the fictional writer Alice’s account of the last few years up to 2022. I didn’t like however the fusion of the two, with Imaginary Leonard long dead and Ghost Virginia popping up and having conversations with Alice. Just too precious by half. The theme of what is fiction and what nonfiction is discussed in a whole section of the book and again at the end: getting ghosts to talk to Alice is presumably a way of melding the two. Alice teaches creative writing so I suppose that is her license to discuss this important question, but getting ghosts to tell a true story of what happened to them is a bit like discussing aboriginal songlines in Latin to a readership of Eastern Orthodox priests.
The Woolfs were members at least friends and lovers of the decadent Bloomsbury set many of whom were nonbinary, including Virginia. That was interesting; so was the very strange relationship between Leonard and Virginia: he loved her with “this devastating fever” yet it seems the marriage was rarely if ever consummated. Alice is almost autobiographical of Sophie and that is an interesting story too, with an idiosyncratic writing style as perhaps befits a teacher of creative writing. But abutting the two didn’t work for me.

[Pam Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice (or Sophie?) is writing a book about Leonard Woolf, the husband of Virginia. It is taking far too long. This fictional tale takes facts Sophie/Alice has researched and blends them with a fictional tale to create a biography of Woolf, both of them. Helped by wisdom and pushes from the ghosts of both Woolfs.

A slight dig at publishing and writing and gloom reflecting on climate devastation and COVID lockdowns also makes for a different read.

Not being a Woolf reader I may have lost a lot of the references. The Bloomsbury group were an incestuous lot?

The book almost deserves another star for this quote:
"Librarians change everything, Alice thought to herself. Without librarians, hot or not, this novel wouldn't amount to anything" (Pg 37)

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75. This novel is quite odd but in a beautiful kind of way. It flits between two times, two stories, that feel increasingly entwined. It captures the feelings of the pandemic almost perfectly - the listlessness, the grief, the insanity. It has the tone of a classic, while feeling modern and timely.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea at all.
Possibly quite clever, I'm not sure, but the writing device was a little too convoluted and I wasn't very engaged by the subjects.
This is another that has been thrown to the curb, 25% in, by me.

[Tundra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a smart and contemporary reflection on how we look back and make understandings on past lives based on our own lives. The narrator, Alice, finds many similarities between her life and that of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Ultimately we are not that different (our trajectory- like a meteor remains similar) and chance events and pure luck see us live out our lives with the gradual dwindling of family and friends. The use of ‘ghost’ Leonard and Virginia allowed Cunningham to share so many extra bits of information that may otherwise have felt forced or overburdened the story. In a bit of humour she often reflects that these snippets may not really be necessary to the plot.
Ultimately I loved that Cunningham didn’t make this feel like a definitive story about the Woolf’s. She acknowledges the vast opinions and tries to share the complexity that is unearthed- the more you know the less you realise you do know.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this in September and thoroughly enjoyed it but apart from it being about Virginia Woolf I can't remember much about it. probably one that is better read from the page than listened to on audiobook to get the most out of it.

[Frankie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the early autofictional sections but I got lost in a lot of the rest. I find I am a fussy reader this year. Seeking something that really cuts through

[Anne Fenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a fantastic read! Beautiful writing, fascinating storylines, both of them. One focuses on Leonard Woolf, many aspects of his long and interesting life, more than being Virginia’s husband. The other metafiction element which I love, is the story of Alice, modern Covid days writer of Leonard’s biography. I thought this was so ambitious but the author carried it off really well.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It wasn't an idle comment, when I wrote on my Sensational Snippet post:

It's a tall order, being the book that comes after Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1972).  But Sophie Cunningham's This Devastating Fever is up to it.  What a book!

It seems almost inevitable that a book which follows something as brilliant as Calvino's masterpiece, will be a disappointment.  And yet This Devastating Fever held me captivated from beginning to end.  I could not have chosen a better book to follow Invisible Cities.  It is that good.

This Devastating Fever has two storylines which blur into each other.  There is an author called Alice in the 21st century, who shares some personal and professional history with Cunningham herself; and there is Leonard Woolf in the 20th century, about whom Alice has been trying to write a book for twenty years.

Interspersed with other things, of course, because she has to earn a living. But she is also distractible.  It is lockdown in Melbourne which makes her get on with it.

Leonard Woolf (1880-1969), is of course the husband of the eminent modernist author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).  Long ago I read her books but not his, and I have on the TBR a bio of Leonard (by Victoria Glendinning) but not of Virginia.  Well, we all know about her, don't we? Or we think we do. Cunningham's extensively researched novel shows us otherwise.

Virginia Woolf was among the innovative women writers who pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a literary device in the early 20th century.  Wikipedia says that her first novel The Voyage Out was published in the same year as Dorothy Richardson's Pointed Roofs (1915, Pilgrimage #1, see my unenthusiastic review) and that Woolf showed in this early novel, techniques used in later novels, including the gap between preceding thought and the spoken word that follows, and the lack of concordance between expression and underlying intention, together with how these reveal to us aspects of the nature of love.  

Did I know that Cunningham was, in such a sophisticated way, channelling Woolf with that same technique when I shared the excerpt that depicted self-censoring in my Sensational Snippet?  No, I did not.   This Devastating Fever is a book that will bear re-reading, for sure.  There is much to explore in a second reading: through the prism of Alice's fraught efforts to finish her stalled novel during the pandemic, Cunningham interrogates the past and the present. Through Leonard's time in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), she casts her perceptive eye over colonialism and its aftermath.  She expresses her characters' fears about the world order during tumultuous geo-political times and what feels like the end of days in a looming catastrophe.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/07/30/t...

[Kamilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm. I can see the appeal. But I think this novel was not written for me.

As someone who is not very well acquainted with the Bloomsbury Set (ok, first time I heard of them were in this book), has read only 1 or 2 V Woolfe books and has never read a Sophie Cunningham book, the only really relatable parts of this book were the ones set in Melbourne lock down.

I did appreciate the parallels between the early 20th and 21st centuries, with war, pandemic and even with the struggles of the author and the publisher.

[Moray Teale · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

I made a promise to myself a few years ago that I would stop reading autofictional novels about protagonists struggling to write a thesis, I may need to extend this to protagonists struggling to write a novel. It took Sophie Cunningham and her somewhat-avatar Alice two decades to write their novels about Leonard Woolf, the member of the Bloomsbury Set and husband of Virginia, I'm afraid to say that, for me, neither really come off. The sections detailing Leonard's life add little to the known story and fail to really get to grips with some of the key issues; the imperialism of the colonial administrator, the, at best paternalistic racism towards the native Sri Lankans, the abuse of his female servants. The male white gaze is a strong overall theme but is challenged surprisingly little by the queer female author. While there is some consideration for the less-than-traditional relationship he had will his brilliant wife there is nothing fresh or unusual about the facts or how they are presented.

Alice's story as she tries to pull together her writing is flighty and unstructured, flitting across war, climate change, pandemics, economic woes, homophobia and dementia without adequately attending to any of them or linking them significantly to Leonard's life except through obvious parallels. The appearances of Imaginary Leonard and Ghost Virginia frankly made me cringe. I found myself endlessly sympathizing with Alice's editor in her attempt to get her writer to produce something worth reading. Alice herself, and by inference, Cunningham raises the question of why the focus would be on Leonard rather than his wife and I'm afraid it is a question this novel fails to answer.

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately this was a disappointment.

For some reason I was under the impression that this was a bit of a ~descent into dystopia story~ as opposed to a weird literary foray that tried to align life events of the fictitious author and her subject. The pacing was off and I struggled to ever really fully immerse myself into the narrative, switching between the experiences of the author and the life of Leonard Woolf before every truly grasping what each was reflecting.

Alice has been trying to write a book about Leonard Woolf for twenty years, during this time she experiences the affects of climate change, a pandemic and general worldly malaise. We never truly get to know much about Alice as a character except how preoccupied she is by a novel she can't seem to write. The intercepts into Leonard's life, I suppose, are supposed to reflect Alice's own experiences but they seem disconnected and off kilter. The points where this almost works are when the ghost of Leonard engages in conversation with Alice but these are occasional.

For all the narrative tried to comment on, imperialism, antisemitism, feminism, colonisation and mental health none of it made an salient points, in fact I forgot that imperialism was commented on so often by Leonard Woolf until I was trying to think about his ghost self being interested in trees. Then I remembered the bizarre analogy with trees and being an imperialist. What?

My own connections with the novel felt empty, even when we emerged into the time of the Melbourne lockdowns during covid. Alice's lack of a true personality made the impact of the narrative meaningless and her struggles with this time, though familiar, felt... vacant.

[Gavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, nah. The book has two narratives in inter-woven chapters: the lives of Leonard & Virginia Woolf & the modern day author writing about Leonard Woolf. I liked this idea & in the first maybe 1/3 I thought both narratives were tracking along nicely. However, the longer the book went on the less appealing I found the lives of Leonard & Virginia Woolf. There were many extra characters added without any real development & I simply lost of track of them. Very annoying to keep going back a few chapters to figure out who this person was. I think the author assumed readers would know something about the Woolfs & the broader Bloomsbury Set & hence recognise the characters - no help to me as I haven't read any of their works ...

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I knew next to nothing about the Bloomsbury Set before reading this book. I struggled through perhaps the first third, but I was carried forward by Alice’s story and when Virginia’s voice was added I was propelled onward in a way I didn’t expect. As the story progressed I found myself engaged in a way that surprised me. Reading about Leonard independent of Virginia (especially pre and post Virginia) was enlightening. A truly enjoyable book.

[Missyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real mixed bag for me. I enjoyed the first third. Then the multiple frequent time periods just got too much for me.

The character in the book I related most with was the agent. What’s with the footnotes?

I struggled to finish it and did giggle when Leonard’s ghost said:
“Maybe you should say less? Or just - and please forgive me for saying this - stop?”

It should have ended there but continued on.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really impressive blend of straight fiction and autofiction, as 'Alice' (a substitute for Cunningham) tries to write a novel about Leonard Woolf. As you might expect, Virginia takes over to an extent. This is full of humour and sly digs at the publishing industry, with historical and modern, as well as a commentary on the world in crisis (again, in the past as well as the present).

[Sandra T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
Publication date: 2 March 2023
~~~~~
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.5 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Ultimo Press for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
~~~~~
Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf.
Uncertain of what to do, she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past.
~~~~~
I absolutely loved the blurring of the edges between fiction and non-fiction in this novel due to our main character Alice's painstaking research into Leonard Woolf's life (and by extension, Virginia Woolf's life) in the archives of many libraries around the world.
The story jumps around quite a bit; we start in 1936 with Leonard, then 2020 with Alice, then off to 1910 with Leonard before being back to 2004 with Alice, and this keeps going for the whole of the book. I don't mind this at all as I'm a fan of dual or multiple timelines. Leonard is our witness to the first half of the 20th century and Alice, to the first quarter of the 21st and it allows the author to draw parallels between those times: colonialism and its repercussions nowadays, conflicts and wars, natural/ecological disasters and diseases/pandemics.
There were some very painful and poignant moments about seeing someone you love in the clutches of a mental illness or a degenerative disease and feeling hopeless and helpless to help, reinforcing the unseen bond across the decades between Leonard and Alice.
Which is why it never felt bizarre to me that Alice should be visited by Leonard's ghost at first, before Virginia's ghost also needed to be heard. Those interactions made for some humorous, but also quite heartbreaking, moments in the story.
I requested this book on a whim after only one recommendation (thank you @savidgereads) and I'm so glad I did as I thought it was amazing.
~~~~~

[Bernard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3. 4 stars.

Enjoyable book comprising of two stories - (1) a writer named Alice who in the COVID-era is trying to finish her book, a book that is a mixture of fact and fiction about Leonard Woolf.
(2) The other part of the book is the writer's subject itself, the life of Leonard Woolf, before, during, and after his difficult marriage to Virginia.

We look at the lives of the Woolfs and their circle of family and friends, in particular the Bloomsbury set. And of course, of Virginia's lapses into bouts of madness.

Going back to the current time, we follow Alice's progress with the book she is anxious to finish,
learn of her background, and of the difficulties coping with life in the midst of COVID lockdowns.

The author, (or Alice) includes quite a few footnotes, many of them comprising a small bio on the many characters that appear in this book. Indeed, there is also a two or three page spread in the book giving the reader a rundown on the Bloomsbury set, which will give those unfamiliar with them a better understanding of who's who and their connection with the Woolfs.

I think this book will please most those who already have some prior knowledge of the literary scene in the first forty years of the Twentieth-Century. I already had some previous knowledge of the people herein and had read the books of David Garnett, for example.

Although I did find my interest waning a bit in the last quarter, I did for most part enjoy this novel. I'll give the author credit for trying something different. The book prompted me to look for some old Virginia Woolf novels that I bought years ago and never read. I found some, but not all. I'm still not sure if I'll ever get to read Virginia's books. I might try one of the more "accessible" ones at least.