A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

Another in Penguin's Virginia Woolf series featuring Atkins. This 1929 essay is perhaps the author's most important work--part feminist manifesto, part literary theory and part personal reflection presaging her suicide. However intriguing on the page, a treatise of this length can easily bore a listener. But Atkins, celebrated for her one-woman play based on this work, never allows the complexity of Woolf's ideas to get the better of her. Instead, she uses the superb writing and rich intellectual capital to best advantage. If she errs, it's in giving the narrative personality greater maturity than is warranted. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: MAR 97]