Letters to Virginia Woolf

Featured in January 2006's Wisconsin Bookwatch>
Letters to Virginia Woolf takes a fresh look at the enduring impact of Woolf's legacy. This grippingly personal testimony of the value of female influence demonstrates the bonding power of women's creative imagination. Lisa Williams successfully demonstrates how to communicate across boundaries of difference and in the process helps to make Woolf accessible across cultures. -- Tuzyline Jita Allan, English Department, Baruch College, City University of New York
Pure poetry Letters to Virginia Woolf is a book not only of considerable significance—I am convinced Woolf herself would sit up and listen to it if she could. -- Lisa Low, editor, Milton, The Metaphysicals and Romanticism
Few write with more honesty and lyricism about tough issues than Lisa Williams in Letters to Virginia Woolf. Williams faces the complexity of adolescence, divorce, childbirth, death and war with heartfelt intelligence, reminding us that struggle and loss often lead to an appreciation of life's wonder. Like Woolf who grappled with 'The Angel in the House' almost a century ago, Williams continues to wrestle with the luminous presence of the past as she peels back 'layers of selves we outgrow but never discard.' Letters to Virginia Woolf guides us through this world of contradiction and offers hope for the dangerous time in which we live. -- Chella Courington, author, Southern Girl Gone Wrong
Every once in a while a book comes your way, almost as if from out of the ether, that moves you to such an extent it forces you, at all costs, to make other people read it too. Lisa Williams's Letters to Virginia Woolf seems to be one of those books. -- Lee John Rourke, Managing Editor * Scarecrow Reviews *
"(Letters)... additionally belongs to what one might call the literature of disaster, specifically the literature inspired by 9/11, including Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Ian McEwan's Saturday....Letters is ultimately a book about recovery and regeneration from pain, both personal and public." -- Jeanne Dubino, www.womenwriters.net
How I loved this book and wept. -- Jane Marcus, CUNY Graduate Center and The City College of New York
Williams knows how to write prose and does so with skillful precision. Whether eloquent, blunt, or a cunning combination of the two, she picks apart some of the most intriguing experiences she has faced and lays them down on paper for her readers without apology or personal bias. What makes the book work so well as a memoir is that Williams does not pretend to speak for all women, but still manages to write in a style that gives a universality to her experiences, thus creating a strong sense of kinship with female readers. -- Angela B. Wade * CALYX *
Williams emerges as a strong creative voice, tempting hubris on all levels, walking honestly through a shock of personal and global dimensions, and finally, standing with Virginia Woolf as a woman whose country is the whole world. -- Suzanne Bellamy * Lifewriting Annual *
For those readers who are more engaged with Woolf's internal life and a writer's creative process toward self-discovery, Letters to Virginia Woolf offers a potential touchstone. -- June Elizabeth Dunn * Woolf Studies Annual *
William's prose is eloquent and direct. * Journal Of The Association For Research On Mothering, May 2007 *
Because the book is so accessible, it will help readers who are 'afraid of Virginia Woolf,' and will appeal to many women on many levels. It will not exclude male readership. This is a great service to all readers of Virginia Woolf. -- Jane Lilienfeld, Professor of English, Lincoln University of Missouri
Lisa Williams's use of Woolf's work is sensitive and apt, illuminating both the original quote and its relevance to our situation in the twenty-first century. -- Sandra McDonald, BOOKWORLD.com
Williams acknowledge[s] that life, often fragile and tenuous, is forever changed in ways that are beyond our control. And, in a series of moving, heart-felt and deeply personal letters to Virginia Woolf, she explores the notion of lost innocence, using Woolf's ideas about war, memory, and childhood as a catalyst...[What] really shines through [in] Williams's short book is her appreciation of life's wonder in all its complexity and fragility. *-Kim Bofo, Reading Matters* -- Kim Bofo, ReadingMatters.com
Featured in January 2006's Wisconsin Bookwatch
Told in six parts which leap off from 9/11 and incorporate Woolf's own thoughts and writing along the way, Williams delivers a heartfelt and elegant anti-war statement without stridency or self-righteousness. The effect is quiet and gradual and, in these unfortunate times, surprisingly salutary. -- Mark Sarvas, "The Elegant Variation" blog