After a nomadic childhood, Susan Sellers ran away to Paris. She worked as a barmaid, tour guide and nanny, bluffed her way as a software translator and co-wrote a film script with a Hollywood screen writer. Closely involved with leading French feminist writers such as Helene Cixous, she was among the first to introduce their work to the English-speaking world. From Paris she travelled to Swaziland, teaching English to tribal grandmothers, and to Peru, where she worked for a women's aid agency. She moved to Scotland and in 2002 won the Canongate Prize for New Writing. She now lives mostly near Cambridge with her husband, a composer, and a young son, but is a part-time lecturer in English literature at St Andrews University. She has published short stories and a number of books and translations; this is her first novel.
'A beautiful, haunting novel about the love, the rivalry between two gifted sisters, and the real purpose of Art. The achievement here is an uncanny, utterly persuasive empathy for both sisters, and the world and times in which they lived.' John Burnside' Deftly, apparently effortlessly, Susan Sellers's novel of love, art, and sexual jealousy gives us convincing and intimate access to the relationship between two remarkable sisters. At once pellucid and sophisticated, Vanessa and Virginia is quite simply a pleasure to read.' Robert Crawford "In short, disconnected scenes of exquisite description and nuanced emotion, Susan Sellers invites us to assemble the pieces into a picture not only of the Bloomsbury circle, but of the exigencies of creative work as outlet, devotion, and anchor. A fascinating, compelling novel written with authority and tenderness." Susan Vreeland 'Reading Vanessa and Virginia is like swimming across the seabed of the minds of sisters Woolf and Bell - everywhere there are fragments of paintings and scenes from novels and lyrical phrases scattered like sunken treasure. It is a novel both exquisite and haunting. A triumph of the imagination.' Rebecca Stott, author of Ghostwalk
'A beautiful, haunting novel about the love, the rivalry between two gifted sisters, and the real purpose of Art. The achievement here is an uncanny, utterly persuasive empathy for both sisters, and the world and times in which they lived.' John Burnside' Deftly, apparently effortlessly, Susan Sellers's novel of love, art, and sexual jealousy gives us convincing and intimate access to the relationship between two remarkable sisters. At once pellucid and sophisticated, Vanessa and Virginia is quite simply a pleasure to read.' Robert Crawford "In short, disconnected scenes of exquisite description and nuanced emotion, Susan Sellers invites us to assemble the pieces into a picture not only of the Bloomsbury circle, but of the exigencies of creative work as outlet, devotion, and anchor. A fascinating, compelling novel written with authority and tenderness." Susan Vreeland 'Reading Vanessa and Virginia is like swimming across the seabed of the minds of sisters Woolf and Bell - everywhere there are fragments of paintings and scenes from novels and lyrical phrases scattered like sunken treasure. It is a novel both exquisite and haunting. A triumph of the imagination.' Rebecca Stott, author of Ghostwalk
Sellers's elegant first novel imagines life in Britain's Bloomsbury circle from the point of view of Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf's older sister. Although Vanessa was an accomplished and highly respected artist, her life was overshadowed by that of her more famous sibling. As she gives Vanessa voice, Sellers examines a relationship between sisters in which love and jealousy are constants; a relationship in which relatives, friends, and lovers are sources of support, inspiration, joy, betrayal, and ultimately devastating sorrow. The amazing aspect of this novel is its painterly quality. As Vanessa recalls her life, layer upon layer of memory is applied to create a portrait of color and shadow, a process that is mirrored in the narrator's descriptions of her methods of painting. While this novel may stand on its own as an exploration of sisterly relationships, it will be more appealing and more accessible to readers already familiar with the lives of Bell and Woolf and knowledgeable about the Bloomsbury milieu. Highly recommended for collections of literary fiction-particularly where Woolf is popular. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/09.]-Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
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