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Having read and not enjoyed or appreciated Virginia Woolf’s ‘To The Lighthouse� (1927) it was with expectation, due to it’s literary reputation, although some trepidation, due to my experience with ‘Lighthouse�, that I approached the markedly different ‘Orlando � A Biography� (1928).

The premise of the life of Orlando was always going to be a highly promising one � beginning as it does with Orlando as a boy at the time of Queen Elizabeth I and following his adventures across different lands, and life of over more than 300 years, during the course of which he awakens one day to find himself now having become a woman and ending in the year of publication 1928 � significantly the year of suffrage for women in the UK. This novel/quasi biography is also seen as Woolf’s long and beautiful love letter to Vita Sackville-West (photographs of whom, as Orlando are included).

‘Orlando� raises, discusses and alludes to some highly important issues and especially considering the time of publication, has since quite rightly become an iconic feminist and transgender classic. Woolf is concerned here with gender politics, sexual stereotyping, gender identity, the institution of marriage, the subjugation of women, androgyny, sexual ambiguity, the restrictive and controlling nature of women’s clothing as well as the premise of primogeniture and much more.

Woolf writes interestingly about life as very much a journey, the passing of time � the way that time passes in different ways, how each of us individually are different people at different times of our lives and live many lives in one � whilst also talking of having a ‘one true controlling self�. In some ways ‘Orlando� could also perhaps be interpreted as in some sense a ghost story, a travel through time as well as time travelling perhaps?

As with ‘Lighthouse� though, ‘Orlando� is a book that I wanted to and had hoped to like � but sadly that wasn’t quite the case. Despite its relatively short length, it still felt like a long novel, its stream of consciousness style of delivery (paragraphs often running for at least the length of a page). Whilst viewed by many as beautifully written bravura writing, for me that wasn’t so. Whilst it may seem sacrilege to those who appreciate ‘Orlando� and the writing Woolf to say so � despite its brevity, ‘Orlando� feels overlong and perhaps would have benefitted from some significant editing.

I found ‘Orlando� ultimately to be often wilfully obscure, self-indulgent and esoteric � its meaning sometimes shrouded in a mist of overt intellectualism and flights of fancy, rendering it often meaningless and impenetrable.

‘Orlando� then is a book which is hugely important and influential (politically and culturally) in terms of its story and the issues it raises � ground breaking as it must have been in 1928. Sadly it now also feels very much a novel which is of its time and a product very much of the overt intellectualism of the Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

In summation � an important, ground breaking, worthy, thought provoking, sporadically compelling and influential novel, but paradoxically one which is self-indulgent, esoteric, often impenetrable and ultimately unsatisfying. There's much to like, but not enough.