I went through some ups and downs with Vanessa and Virginia. For the first 150 pages I just loved everything and soaked it all in, the characters and the ideas and the lovely beautiful moments. I've always found the Bloomsbury group fascinating, and I enjoyed the scenes featuring their debates and conversations. Then, to be honest, I got a little sick of how lovely and beautiful everything was. Too much bliss is just tiresome. I began to question Parmar and her writing, with all the characters narrating themselves so neatly, all their correspondence so conveniently expositional. And everything--at least four sentences out of five--is metaphor and simile on top of metaphor and simile, and come on already, can we please just have a few straightforward unembellished sentences for a while? 
 But then the bliss ends, as bliss does, with a betrayal and several frustrating developments; I went through a period of disgust and sadness and anger and wishing with gritted teeth. They won me back, Vanessa and Priya Parmar, and the second I finished the book I started scouring my bookshelves to find something that would let me stay in that world. I only have Morgan Forster and A Room of One's Own, so instead I watched The Hours and cried and tried to sketch Virginia Woolf in a Deckchair in my art journal. 
 I guess they resonate with me, the Stephen sisters. I end up loving them even more, and I have great hopes for my future relationship with Priya Parmar now, too.