2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

I made a promise to myself a few years ago that I would stop reading autofictional novels about protagonists struggling to write a thesis, I may need to extend this to protagonists struggling to write a novel. It took Sophie Cunningham and her somewhat-avatar Alice two decades to write their novels about Leonard Woolf, the member of the Bloomsbury Set and husband of Virginia, I'm afraid to say that, for me, neither really come off. The sections detailing Leonard's life add little to the known story and fail to really get to grips with some of the key issues; the imperialism of the colonial administrator, the, at best paternalistic racism towards the native Sri Lankans, the abuse of his female servants. The male white gaze is a strong overall theme but is challenged surprisingly little by the queer female author. While there is some consideration for the less-than-traditional relationship he had will his brilliant wife there is nothing fresh or unusual about the facts or how they are presented.

Alice's story as she tries to pull together her writing is flighty and unstructured, flitting across war, climate change, pandemics, economic woes, homophobia and dementia without adequately attending to any of them or linking them significantly to Leonard's life except through obvious parallels. The appearances of Imaginary Leonard and Ghost Virginia frankly made me cringe. I found myself endlessly sympathizing with Alice's editor in her attempt to get her writer to produce something worth reading. Alice herself, and by inference, Cunningham raises the question of why the focus would be on Leonard rather than his wife and I'm afraid it is a question this novel fails to answer.

Really wanted to like this and stick through with it, as I don't read enough Australian fiction, but I just really couldn't get behind the writing style nor the love for Leonard Woolf.

This Devastating Fever is an interesting and clever novel. It's very meta, a book within a book and characters that, well, sort of leap off the page into life. Sort of ;-) It's part biography, part historical fiction, with a touch of fantasy.

Alice is trying to finish a book she is writing about Leonard Woolf's life. During the Covid-19 pandemic. The story jumps between different periods -- 1904, 1910, 1936, 2004, 2020 -- but with a clear and coherent structure so that it never gets confusing (or annoying).

First, I must say that I have never enjoyed Virginia Woolf's writing, and never read anything written by her husband, Leonard. This did not in the least prevent me from enjoying this novel. You don't need to share the protagonist's love of the Bloomsbury set to fully enjoy this book. It is intelligent, literary (but not pretentious), well written. It's witty at times, thought-provoking and quite engrossing. There is enough that is set in the present to balance out the biographical thread.

I would give it a 4 for the literary quality but bring it down to a very personal 3 stars, because although I liked this book and enjoyed reading it, I just didn't fall in love.

Not for me. I enjoyed some of the Leonard Woolf fragments but as soon as they got interesting the author jumped away to the quite banal account of the protagonist author's faltering process (and the imagined Woolf talking to the author didn't work for me). Perhaps I'd feel differently if I wasn't in the writing world myself but the protagonist's musings on writer's block and cats just felt too predictable.

I'm interested in Leonard Woolf and the creative process but I didn't feel there was enough substance to either strand. DNF

I have rather eclectic reading tastes I tend to jump around the genres and so I suspect that is why this genre defying novel appealed so much to me when it was brought to my attention by @savidgereads in his @womensprize prediction video.

Part historical biography/ fictional reimagining of the life of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, part true account of Cunningham writing said book about the Woolfs told through a fictional author named Alice. Alice is struggling to finish the book to the standard of her editor, a book which takes decades to write. The time to write encompasses the fears of Y2K, Australian bush fires, climate crisis and covid pandemic. As Alice descends further into her writing the ghosts of Leonard and Virginia start to appear to question and challenge her understanding and artistic directions.

I appreciate that all sounds rather strange but Cunningham has cleverly woven it all together into a fascinating and thought provoking novel but also one that’s easy and enjoyable to read.

This will hold huge interest to those interested in history of literature and the Bloomsbury early scenes, once again I’m questioning why despite owning a few I’ve yet to pick up a book written by Woolf. Worst still there are so many references both in the historical and modern day chapters I came away with a long list of books to add to my wishlist.

Some of my favourite parts were the interactions between Alice and the ghosts, these were both amusing and helped to tie up the historical and modern sections. Whilst sounding implausible I actually took these sections to be occurring in Alice’s head as she became more enclosed in her writing and they made me ponder about the obsession required for artists.

Very clever and also timely, it provokes questions both with the reader and on a wider scale, this would be an interesting book club read there’s lots to unpick! Thank you @ultimopress and @netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

A curious and ambitious effort. Blending fact and fiction the premise is intriguing. There are some dark and heavy themes covered and I found the obsession with Leonard Woolf to be very strange but often quite touching when his world and that of the protagonist Alice seem to mirror one another. Unique but not for everyone.

Ambitious and often inventive, Sophie Cunningham’s novel opens well but I never felt it lived up to its initial promise. It uses shifting timelines to follow Australian writer Alice who’s struggling to complete a novel about Leonard Woolf. It’s a project about the past that Alice hopes will also reveal something about her own present, partly influenced by her fascination with Geoff Dyer’s idiosyncratic account of his attempts to write about D. H. Lawrence. Alice’s idea of Leonard is as someone who lived through moments of immense change and upheaval from the waning of the British Empire, to war to global pandemic, and someone, perhaps, whose journey might serve as a commentary on her own uncertain era.

There’s a definite metafictional aspect to Cunningham’s story. Although Cunningham’s distanced herself from her fictional creation in many ways Alice comes across as a version of Cunningham: both queer, white Australians; both engaged for over sixteen years in trying to craft a challenging work of fiction. At first this moves unpredictably between Alice and Leonard, gradually building towards Alice’s days in lockdown during the early months of Covid, Alice and Leonard both increasingly aware that they inhabit precarious worlds which may be hurtling towards extinction. But eventually their lives intersect, with ghost Leonard (and sometimes ghost Virginia) popping up here and there to enter into dialogues with Alice.

A great deal of space’s given over to Leonard as a colonial administrator in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), something which seems to have made an indelible impression on him. These sections of the narrative have been criticised for their centring of Leonard’s “white gaze” and their failure to adequately address Leonard’s (and Virginia’s) complicated relationship with imperialism and racism. It’s a valid criticism in many ways, certainly Cunningham’s storyline featuring apologetic, white liberal Alice’s visit to Sri Lanka to research her book does very little to counter it or launch a convincing critique of Leonard’s conflicted views around colonialism. But, after reading this, I think part of the problem is that Cunningham has weighed her story down with so many complex issues that it’s not possible for any one of them to be properly considered.

Although there are numerous lucid and engaging passages there’s just too much packed into this. Cunningham brings in reflections on climate change and environmental blight including Australia’s extreme weather conditions; refugee crises; violence against women; gender and sexuality; Covid; Spanish Flu; war; imperialism; anti-Semitism; the rise of fascism; sickness and being a carer; the nature of time; fractured families; as well as an ongoing discussion of the process of writing, being an author and striving for success in an increasingly competitive industry. All of this in not much more than 200 pages. As the story unfolds it also starts to feel increasingly conventional, Cunningham’s clearly grounded her piece in extensive research but the later sections - which rehash key events in Leonard and Virginia’s lives together – come across as thinly-veiled biography in the guise of fiction. Yet, despite its flaws, it’s a surprisingly readable, often thought-provoking, novel even if I didn’t find it a particularly satisfying one. It's also one I think will appeal to readers like me with an interest in Bloomsbury and the Woolfs.

This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
Publication date: 2 March 2023
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.5 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Ultimo Press for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf.
Uncertain of what to do, she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past.
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I absolutely loved the blurring of the edges between fiction and non-fiction in this novel due to our main character Alice's painstaking research into Leonard Woolf's life (and by extension, Virginia Woolf's life) in the archives of many libraries around the world.
The story jumps around quite a bit; we start in 1936 with Leonard, then 2020 with Alice, then off to 1910 with Leonard before being back to 2004 with Alice, and this keeps going for the whole of the book. I don't mind this at all as I'm a fan of dual or multiple timelines. Leonard is our witness to the first half of the 20th century and Alice, to the first quarter of the 21st and it allows the author to draw parallels between those times: colonialism and its repercussions nowadays, conflicts and wars, natural/ecological disasters and diseases/pandemics.
There were some very painful and poignant moments about seeing someone you love in the clutches of a mental illness or a degenerative disease and feeling hopeless and helpless to help, reinforcing the unseen bond across the decades between Leonard and Alice.
Which is why it never felt bizarre to me that Alice should be visited by Leonard's ghost at first, before Virginia's ghost also needed to be heard. Those interactions made for some humorous, but also quite heartbreaking, moments in the story.
I requested this book on a whim after only one recommendation (thank you @savidgereads) and I'm so glad I did as I thought it was amazing.
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