"An insightful, witty look at Virginia Woolf through the lens of the extraordinary women closest to her"--

An intimate work of memoir and literary criticism describes how the author found literary solace and insights in Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" while mourning the death of her beloved father.

I took off my wedding ring for the last time--a gold band with half a line of "Morning Song" by Sylvia Plath etched inside--and for weeks afterwards, my thumb would involuntarily reach across my palm for the warm bright circle that had gone. I didn't fling the ring into the long grass, like women do in the movies, but a feeling began bubbling up nevertheless, from my stomach to my throat: it could fling my arms out. I was free ... A few years into...

"This book is about Chelsea Manning's leaking of government documents. Manning told the truth about war and a social order sustained by it. Her truth-telling also revealed the complicity of public and private in casting her - a non-gender-conforming individual - as an improper truth-teller. And Manning's truth-telling unsettled hierarchies of truth-telling that prop up a discriminatory and often oppressive social order. I read Manning not as an isolated...

"For fans of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank comes a captivating novel that offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Vanessa Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf, and the controversial and popular circle of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group. London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy...

Ever since the publication of his first essay collection, The Broken Estate, in 1999, James Wood has been widely regarded as a leading literary critic of the English-speaking world. His essays on canonical writers (Gustav Flaubert, Herman Melville), recent legends (Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson) and significant contemporaries (Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante) have established a standard for informed and incisive appreciation, composed in a distinctive...

Eighteen critical essays on the works of the English writer who experimented with stream-of-consciousness and other innovative techniques.