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This was my first time reading Orlando. It was also my second time.

I like to think that everything happens for a reason - not that I believe it was planned or decided by a powerful creature for me - but because the idea that everything effects what surrounds it sounds about right to me. So I see a purpose in this reading experience that Virginia Woolf provided me and take it as an important lesson to carry with me from now on - and how appropriate that it came just at the beginning of a new and exciting year.

I’ve always liked to plan things to the last detail in my life. With reading, unfortunately - and I say that because sometimes it becomes too much to follow-up on - it is the same. I had a strict schedule to read Orlando and I wanted to finish it by January 9th. The day arrived and I only had twenty pages or so left to finish the book, so great, another thing was on the right track. And then I realized nothing was on the right track. I had been racing through the book to comply with a deadline that I stipulated - for no authentic reason, really - in my head and I wasn’t enjoying it at all. Yes, I saw glimpses of brilliance here and there, and I loved the idea of the book since the beginning, plus the fact that I’ve always admired both Woolf and her writing style, so it surprised (and bothered) me that I wasn’t actually having a great time with it. I put it down and analyzed the situation for two minutes - it was a no brainer, I know, but when you’re caught up in it, it may take a while to realize things - and then decided to start over. To read everything once again, including the Introduction that I skipped the first time. Oh my! What about my schedule? It would have to give in. So I went back to the beginning, with hopes of a better read this time and without a deadline. After thirty pages or so, I realized the blur I had read for racing through the words felt really different and so much better now, as if I had just put on my reading glasses.

Forget mostly everything you know from Woolf and expect to find here based on previous works - it’s a departure from them, almost completely. Mrs. Dalloway became famous for being an account of a single day of a person’s life; to counter that, we read in this book more than three hundred years of Orlando’s life. To the Lighthouse is known for its stream of consciousness style that is intertwined with the plot and characters' lines and actions, making it a complex read; this novel is straightforward and presented in the format of a biography of the character Orlando - one would say the novel is actually semi-biographical as it’s been widely known that the protagonist is based on Vita Sackville-West, an English writer who’s been romantically involved with Woolf; because of that, the novel is seen as a love-letter to Vita. More than that, it is a love letter to literature, to the exercise of writing and to writers. It takes us on a grand literary journey throughout the centuries - kind of an expanded Oxen of the Sun from Ulysses - where Virginia emulates some styles and eras in her writing - although still making her book easily accessible as opposed to what Joyce did in the specified episode.

This biography tells us the story of Orlando, an individual born as a biological male who lives for more than three hundred years. Seems interesting enough, right? There’s more: at around thirty years of age, he wakes up to find out a change has occurred: he’s mysteriously been transformed into a woman; he (she) is now biologically female. This is the basic frame of the novel.

But truly, what I most admired and enjoyed in this work was Woolf. I love how she comprehended and created her protagonist as someone constituted of dissimilarities and paradoxes all throughout the times. If we, inside of one year, change our minds so often, imagine someone living for three centuries. Not only did this gave a touch of realism to this distinct story, but it also kept Orlando’s character as being fresh, not determined from beginning to end and, above all, unpredictable.

What I mostly got from Orlando’s character was the sense of solitude and constant search. Despite being surrounded by people throughout centuries, Orlando was really in search of herself, of who he was, of what she was - really, in search of a meaning, of a purpose, of her individuality. It didn’t help, of course, that on the times he opened up and trusted people, she ended up being betrayed by them, only renewing his sense of loneliness. Notwithstanding, she still seemed to worry so much about people’s opinions and conceptions about him, for she was longing to fit somewhere.

Orlando’s freedom - for so to speak - came from an epiphany he had while struggling about his writings, when she realized that in need to be true to himself, she needed to write first and foremost for herself, leaving all glory aside that for a moment she considered seeking for herself - again proving his need to fit, to be accepted. Following this moment, Orlando found the necessity of taking care of his house, which I interpreted as a clear metaphor that she, from that moment on, wanted to value himself, his story, her lineage, the foundation: he was, for once, proud of being who she was.

"He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess � he was a woman."

Although Virginia made a decision to not explain or address too much the sex change - and I applaud her for that, for it was treated naturally (despite the amazing scene, one of the best in the novel, where the three sisters Chastity, Purity and Modesty tried to cover the beautiful transformation) as all gender issues should be, for they’re not, in my opinion, much more than a simple detail that constitutes us such as our height and weight -, I wanted to at least acknowledge here on my humble review how brilliant she was for writing so bravely - and yet with a much admirable lightness - on a subject that still, in 2015, is such a taboo to our society. Virginia wrote as if the sexually defined roles were no more than fantasies that could easily be stripped off for the benefit of another that better suited the individual.

Still on Woolf’s levity in addressing the change, the reflections made by Orlando right after becoming a woman were really fun and interesting to read. His comparisons between the genders and her efforts in learning how to act, be and think had a subtle but undeniable touch of sarcasm. Orlando trying to readjust her behavior after becoming a woman, to comply to what was expected of her - and this was a constant for him because, outside the gender issue, the character goes through a lot of different eras and times, each one with silly defined roles by society - , felt like someone who needed to learn to walk again, or rather someone who’s been through a short period of blindness and regains sight, only to find out, this time, that the world is under different lights and colors, as if the sun had been changed to blue, or pink.

"Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind."

Other aspect that was surely to please me was Woolf’s addressing to memory, time and consciousness - topics I’ve been reading about for quite some time. Still, she was able to add her own twist to those and seemingly inverted Proust’s approach: instead of showing the moment that the past resurfaces through an involuntary memory, she shows us the present fighting back to regain the mind’s control, mostly through sounds that awake Orlando again, as if the present was actually screaming for attention.

Back to the first time I attempted to read this book, and also one of the changes I made that contributed to my new-found enjoyment of it was about reading the notes included in my edition. I seem to have a love/hate relationship with notes; while they’re completely essential in some books, practically part of the narrative and elucidative to the comprehension of the work, in others they are simply too distracting without adding much to the experience. My edition has 262 notes (for a book that has about 240 pages.) Most were about the parallels between Vita’s life and Orlando’s, and those I found to be unnecessary. After I stopped reading all of them and only payed attention to the ones that promised to add to my understanding, my reading flow also improved.

: although it hasn’t been acclaimed either by critics nor the public, I was very much curious to watch the film from 1992, directed by Sally Potter, to see how Woolf’s narrative would de adapted into the screen. While it had some nice moments, and most of them provided by Tilda Swinton’s talents who plays Orlando greatly, others were a great disappointment: to justify Orlando’s longer than usual life by making it a gift from the Queen is completely unnecessary; after that, I was scared they would also try to justify the sex change - gladly, that wasn’t the case. Having Orlando constantly looking at the camera in attempts to connect to the viewer felt forced and became very predictable and - what I think must have been the sole reason the director decided on using those - also didn’t match the wit that Woolf achieved by having the biographer addressing the reader in several occasions. It was a fun time watching the film, but it doesn’t stand on its own like the novel gracefully does.

Rating: for a book that, under 300 pages, packed not only a great story, with wonderful wit and humor, written brilliantly, but also taught me an important lesson: 5 stars.