Vanessa and Her Sister (Parmar) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Rarely do you encounter a woman who commands as much admiration as does the painter Vanessa Bell in Priya Parmar's multilayered, subtly shaded novel…. Parmar's portrait brings Vanessa out of the shadows, into fully realized, shining visibility. The world remembers Virginia better than her enigmatic older sister: Parmar restores the symmetry of their relationship in the familial landscape, showing how essential Vanessa's steadying force was to Virginia's precarious balance.… Parmar's fabricated journal is an uncanny success. Its entries, plausible and graceful, are imbued with the same voice that can be found in letters by or about Vanessa. And Parmar's decision to interleave the invented diary with invented correspondence heightens the authentic feel of the portrait…In Vanessa and Her Sister, Parmar gives truth and definition to the character of a woman whose nature was as elusive as her influence was profound.
Liesl Schillinger - New York Times Book Review


In her gossipy, entertaining historical novel about the British bohemians, Priya Parmar conjures a devastating fictional portrait of one of those triangles—the great writer Virginia Woolf; her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell; and Vanessa’s husband, art critic Clive Bell.... Parmar’s perceptive and well-informed fill-in-the-blanks approach—and her elegant, accessible style—makes for some tasty, frothy Bloomsbury pie, indeed.
USA Today


An elegant, entertaining novel that brings new life to the Bloomsbury Group’s intrigues.
Dallas Morning News


The pretzeled plot unfolds at a steady pace, in crisp period prose, and rarely feels inevitable.
New York


Captivating...a subtle exploration of the sisters’ complicated emotional life.... Through letters and Vanessa’s journal entries, [Parmar] captures the excitement of social experimentation.
BBC


In this delightful novel, Parmar reimagines the brilliant, fragile writer and her turn-of-the-century bohemian friends, the famous Bloomsbury set, through the eyes of her painter sister Vanessa.... You’ll be spellbound (Book of the Week)
People


You’ll get lost in the worlds of Vanessa Bell and her sister, Virginia Woolf, as they struggle to make it as a painter and an author, respectively, in prewar London—but more so than art, this is a story of sisterhood.
Glamour


Parmar ambitiously attempts to show us through the eyes of Vanessa Bell, a celebrated painter in her own right, in her inventive, meticulously researched Vanessa and Her Sister.... The Bloomsbury Group were famous for their weekly salons, which were fueled by intellectual discourse, banter and booze; in Parmar’s story, you can almost hear the glasses tinkling. But the author’s greatest triumph is giving voice to the steady, loyal, motherly Vanessa, who lived nobly in her sister’s shadow only to experience a heartbreaking betrayal.
Good Housekeeping


Parmar inhabits the gilded "bohemian hinterland" of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa, creating a vibrant fictional homage.
Oprah Magazine


Vanessa and Her Sister provides a fascinating take on this literary family, and the affection and exasperation Virginia’s sister might have felt living with a genius, who was prone to fits of madness. If you’re at all interested in Virginia Woolf, or just a fan of a good piece of historical fiction, in the vein of The Paris Wife, this book’s the one for you.
Bustle


(Starred review.) [E]xcellent.... Parmar’s narrative is riveting and successfully takes on the task of turning larger-than-life figures into real people. Readers who aren’t familiar with the Bloomsbury group might be overwhelmed at first by the sheer number of characters in the book, but Parmar weaves their stories together so effortlessly that nothing seems out of place.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) A devoted, emotionally intense portrait of the Bloomsbury group focuses in particular on sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, whose complicated relationship is tested to the breaking point by their competing affections for two men. [The Bloomsbury] group's extraordinarily intertwined history...[is] not exactly uncharted territory, but Parmar enters it with passion and precision, delivering a sensitive, superior soap opera of celebrated lives.
Kirkus Reviews