I am crying as I write this review; I think partially because this is the last modernist work I had to read by Virginia Woolf, and so now much of my journey with her is complete, but also because this was simply the most beautiful love letter of a novel that I think could ever be written. 

Virginia must have adored Vita so much, for this novel is such a faithful depiction of her love for her. I am so glad I read this after having experienced love for someone else myself, so I could see the reason for all the references to fritillaries, the husband as possibly a self-insertion of Woolf herself, how ‘Orlando’ was Virginia giving Vita her goose, for “Was not poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? … What could have been more secret, she thought, more slow, and like the intercourse of lovers, than the stammering answer she had made all these years…”

This novel is Woolf answering Sackville-West’s call, and so this novel is as much hers as it is Woolf’s; it is a gift. I hope their love is immortalised forever.