If you are compiling your annual list of summer reads, be sure to include Vanessa and Her Sister: A Novel
. This book is like a fun little literary vacation - it transports you straight into that legendary inner circle known as the Bloomsbury Group. The novel covers the period from 1905 to 1912 and is written mainly through diary entries from Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), painter sister of celebrated writer Virginia Woolf. Oh Virginia. I confess that, although I studied her novels in university, I didn't know a whole lot about the life of Virginia Woolf. I knew that she killed herself in the end, of course, but I had no idea about the challenges she created in her circle of family and friends in her earlier years. Brilliant, captivating, attractive and struggling with mental illness, she had quite an effect on those around her.
