Description: Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt award for biography, this remarkable portrait sheds new light on Virginia Woolf's relationships with her family and friends and how they shaped her work. Forrester weaves a colorful, intense drama that forces readers to rethink their understanding of Woolf, her writing, and her world.
Review Quotes: Virginia Woolf was the object of considerable mystery. Viviane Forrester not only tells us about this mystery but clarifies it. At the beginning, the biographer announces that she will shatter equivocal and false portraits. She does precisely that. The result marks a decisive break in the knowledge we thought we had of this English writer. Forrester crosses the threshold of truth. Without reproving those who wrote before her, knowing what was said and how, Forrester provides a staggering analysis of the youth, marriage, work, and world of Woolf. She tracks, close up, the internal defense mechanisms and means of protection that veil the truth. In a style as poetic as the novelist/poetess deserves, Forrester throws light on the life and the death, Woolf's two tragedies, and reveals the price of her scintillating work.--Alice Ferney "Le Figaro "