Vanessa and Virginia [Paperback]

'A beautiful, haunting novel about the love, the rivalry between two gifted sisters, and the real purpose of Art. The achievement here is an uncanny, utterly persuasive empathy for both sisters, and the world and times in which they lived.' John Burnside' Deftly, apparently effortlessly, Susan Sellers's novel of love, art, and sexual jealousy gives us convincing and intimate access to the relationship between two remarkable sisters. At once pellucid and sophisticated, Vanessa and Virginia is quite simply a pleasure to read.' Robert Crawford "In short, disconnected scenes of exquisite description and nuanced emotion, Susan Sellers invites us to assemble the pieces into a picture not only of the Bloomsbury circle, but of the exigencies of creative work as outlet, devotion, and anchor. A fascinating, compelling novel written with authority and tenderness." Susan Vreeland 'Reading Vanessa and Virginia is like swimming across the seabed of the minds of sisters Woolf and Bell - everywhere there are fragments of paintings and scenes from novels and lyrical phrases scattered like sunken treasure. It is a novel both exquisite and haunting. A triumph of the imagination.' Rebecca Stott, author of Ghostwalk

In a gloomy house in Hyde Park Gate, two young girls are raised to be perfect ladies. But from the beginning Vanessa Bell and her sister Virginia Woolf pursue different dreams, and in their Bloomsbury household they create a ferment of free thinking and even freer living. Devoted to each other, yet fiercely competitive, both sisters fight to realise their artistic vision amidst a chaos of desire, scandal, illness and war. Traced with lyrical intensity, their intertwined lives gradually reveal an underlying pattern. Only at the end of this fascinating work does the real nature of the relationship between Virginia and Vanessa become clear.Susan Sellers' novel reveals a dramatic new interpretation of one of the most famous and iconic events in twentieth-century literature - Woolf's suicide by drowning - as the two sisters' life-long rivalry reaches its final crisis. An expert on Woolf's life and work, Susan Sellers is inspired by Woolf's own brilliant narrative technique - a sensuous, impressionistic, interior voice - to inhabit the mind of an artist at work, and recreate the tale of the two sisters as Vanessa might have told it. "Vanessa and Virginia" is a chronicle of love and revenge, madness, genius, and the compulsion to create beauty in the face of relentless difficulty and deep grief.

`Vanessa and Virginia is a beautiful, haunting novel about the love, the rivalry between two gifted sisters, and the real purpose of Art. The achievement here is an uncanny, utterly persuasive empathy for both sisters, and the world and times in which they lived.'

John Burnside

'Deftly, apparently effortlessly, Susan Sellers' novel of love, art, and sexual jealousy gives us convincing and intimate access to the relationship between two remarkable sisters. At once pellucid and sophisticated, 'Vanessa and Virginia' is quite simply a pleasure to read.'

Robert Crawford

After a nomadic childhood, Susan Sellers ran away to Paris. She worked as a barmaid, tour guide and nanny, bluffed her way as a software translator and co-wrote a film script with a Hollywood screen writer. Closely involved with leading French feminist writers such as Helene Cixous, she was among the first to introduce their work to the English-speaking world. From Paris she travelled to Swaziland, teaching English to tribal grandmothers, and to Peru, where she worked for a women's aid agency. She moved to Scotland and in 2002 won the Canongate Prize for New Writing. She now lives mostly near Cambridge with her husband, a composer, and a young son, but is a part-time lecturer in English literature at St Andrews University. She has published short stories and a number of books and translations; this is her first novel.

The sun streams through the window. I shift round in bed and turn to face the light. As I open my eyes I see the russet and gold of the apple leaves outside. I lie still for a moment and listen to the sounds inside the house. All is quiet. I think of Duncan, asleep in the next room. I get out of bed and slide my feet into slippers, wrapping a shawl round my shoulders. The apple trees dance in the breeze outside, a living mosaic. I go downstairs and put the kettle on the hob.

Duncan appears a few minutes after me, his eyes bleary with sleep. He sits on one of the upturned barrels I have commandeered as chairs and catches hold of my hand. I press my lips to his crown, drinking in his unwashed smell, feeling the coarseness of his hair on my cheek. We stay like this for a moment, and I watch the last of the summer swallows swoop for the crumbs I have thrown onto the lawn. Duncan lets go of my hand. This is the signal for me to withdraw. I busy myself with breakfast, fitting the slices of bread onto the prongs of my fork and toasting them over the fire. We eat like peasants, without plates or cutlery, grinning in complicit pleasure at our slovenliness. I look round the shelves and wonder what we can have for lunch. There are eggs from the farm. Later I will dig potatoes and carrots from the garden. We have bacon and plenty of preserves. I reach up for a jar of jam to go with the toast. It is strawberry, bottled last summer. I find a spoon and pass the jar to Duncan. He takes the spoon and sets it next to a vase of flowers I have picked for the table. I see him studying the arrangement, taking in its contours and angles, weighing it as a subject to paint. I look for a second spoon but cannot find one. Instead, Duncan puts his finger in the jar and lifts it to my mouth. I lick it clean of the sweet, sticky jam. He dips his finger back into the jar. Somehow, we will survive the coming war.