Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

By Maggie Gee

What if Virginia Woolf came back to life in the twenty-first century?

Bestselling author Angela Lamb is going through a mid-life crisis. She dumps her irrepressible daughter Gerda at boarding school and flies to New York to pursue her passion for Woolf, whose manuscripts are held in a private collection. When a bedraggled Virginia Woolf herself materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela, stunned, rushes after her on to the streets of Manhattan.

Soon she is chaperoning her troublesome heroine as Virginia tries to understand the internet and scams bookshops with ‘rare signed editions’. Then Virginia insists on flying with Angela to Istanbul, where she is surprised by love and steals the show at an International Conference on – Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is a witty and profound novel about female rivalry, friendships, mothers and daughters, and the miraculous possibilities of a second chance at life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Telegram Books
• Release date: Jun 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781846591891

Maggie Gee

Maggie Gee is the author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including The White Family (shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes), and a memoir, My Animal Life. She is a Fellow and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature, and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages. Maggie Gee was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to literature.

Reviews for Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

[hangerg_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So this is a breathtakingly bold conceit that could have gone disastrously wrong, which is partly what prompted me to pick it up. I did start it with a bit of an attitude of waiting for it to fall apart, but it never faltered, and it carried me with it right to the end. So the idea is this - Vigininia Woolf, the very actual, living breathing person, is, by some fantastical literary magic, willed back into existence by an author researching her work for a conference paper, in New York circa 2014. She has all her memories up to and including the moment she dies, and she quickly becomes aware that she has skipped forward in time. Her reactions to this, apart from a certain lack of curiosity about how it came to have happened, which she accepts fairly placidly, seem absolutely spot on from what I know of her life, and at times are portrayed with heart rending emotional insight. The first person viewpoint switches from Virginia to the author who conjured her into being, who acts as her tour guide to twenty first century life. There's a sub plot involving the author's rather neglected daughter's rite of passage quest to track her mother down, which felt like the least vital part of the story, and there's an attempt to explain it all to some extent at the end that felt unnecessary. It also, at times, perhaps takes too many liberties with Woolf's inner life, but then I think it has been meticulously researched, so perhaps I should bow to Gee's superior knowledge of her subject, and also, she acknowledges in a foreword that part of the reason for writing the book is to tackle Woolf, to, in an affectionate way, bring her down from her sacred pedestal as the champion supreme of women writers. It's an enormously bold undertaking, and despite the odd flaw, I have to award it full marks for sheer chutzpah I think. It's also a hell of a ride. Highly recommended for all Woolf fans.