It was written for Vita Sackville-West as a sort of biography of Orlando, who starts off as a young nobleman in the 1500’s and changes seamlessly to a nobelwoman about a third of the way through the book. Orlando lives for hundreds of years and sees the centuries go by in somewhat of a surreal haze.
Maybe the reading of this book also changes as effortlessly with the age of the reader. I think it is known as a comment on gender roles. But for me it was more about time and how life’s experiences build up into massive dust piles in our brains.

It is about a reader and a dreamer… the stories we tell ourselves and those we read in books over our lives. I think it is about how we see people we have thought about and read in our minds eye and imagine them into being. Orlando thinks he saw Shakespeare once.. or did he imagine seeing him and make it real. Or maybe he read Shakespeare so much he thought he had glimpsed the man himself between the lines. Do we create an imagined myth and believe it into reality? Do we think back to those imaginings as the years go by and see them as part of ourselves?
Anyway, that is what Orlando spoke about to me. It is a fun, funny, wonderful read. The funny bits come unexpectedly so not to be read while sipping tea!