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Jeanette Winterson

I've been slugging through Powerbook, my first Winterson, but I think now I might put it down and move onto Lighthousekeeping instead. Thanks so much, the review was great!
 
I read he column every Saturday in the Times Book Section but had never read any of her work till recently. I picked up Oranges are not the only Fruit which I really enjoyed.

The story carries you along well, the charaters are alive and I almost feel I've met some of them. Although the story is anchored firmly in time and place the themes are timeless and though provoking.

If you wnat something to compare it to I would say that in some ways it resembles a cross between Angela Carter and Charles Dickens with her own sense of humour and identity thrown in.

Would highly recommend this one.
 
It is interesting that this fairly dormant thread just popped back up as I've just now finished Oranges are not the only fruit. It had been hanging around my house for years, and I picked it up at random the other day thinking the cover art looked interesting and wondering where I had gotten the book from. Turns out that the "non-reader" in the house had to read it for a class in college. I figured that out when I came across a couple highlighted (grr) passages.

Shade said:
Oranges are not the only fruit (1985). The book for which she is semi-famous and which everyone seems to be able to get along with. It's warm and funny and likeable and slightly original (for the stuff about the Orange demon and fantasy-fairytale stuff interwoven with trouble at t'mill northern grimness). It bashes religion and talks up what commentators call girl-on-girl action. She does however have this terrible revisionist attitude and speaks now of Oranges as having "a new way with language" and "a spiral narrative" which is pure bollocks. It's just a nice, thoughtful but not especially challenging read.
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Anyway, for the most part I agree with Shade's critique here. At less than two hundred pages it is far from a challenge to get through this book. The story itself was interesting and involved one of my favorite fictional themes (as Shade so eloquently put it, "religion bashing"). I didn't necessarily find the interwoven fairytale bits to be all that original of an idea, but I did enjoy them. I will certainly read another of Winterson's books, in fact I'm headed to the library to see what they've got there. However, I am a tad surprised at the fact that this was a Whitbread winner. While it is a funny and interesting story with excellent characters I just think that a book should have more than Oranges are not the only fruit does to win a major literary award.
 
What a great summary of Jeanette's books. I just finished Lighthousekeeping and completely agree that she has "returned to form." I highly recommend it.

Did I read that she has a new book out? I can't remember.
 
lenny nero said:
In '05 she put out Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles, which I haven't read.
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I have. Seems I forgot to post my thoughts on it, so here goes.

Just finished "Weight". Nice little book, though it failed to grab me in the way the fantastic "Lighthousekeeping" did. While I appreciate much of what she says in it - the weight of nothing, the weight of limitations, love making it possible not to carry more but to realize you don't have to carry it, etc - it struck me as... fragmented. There are bits and pieces, especially when she stays with the main story of Atlas and Heracles, that hint at the genius that "Lighthousekeeping" proved; but then there are long pieces where she adresses the reader directly, speaking in first person... and while it's interesting, it does mean the book becomes more of a semi-fictional essay than a novel. Stewart mentioned that "Weight" is the first book she's written on order - and it shows; she spends more than a few pages explaining why she wrote it. I don't mind, but there's a story in here that's not necessarily helped by being told at length her reasons for writing it. I mean... simile: I love watching movies. And since I love finding out how movies are made, I love DVD commentaries. But the first time I watch a movie, I want to make up my own opinion. In "Weight", the commentary track isn't optional; it's all over the narrative.

Still, at times, it's beautiful. Digression: it reminds me of the writings of (sadly mostly untranslated) Swedish astronomer/philosopher Peter Nilson, who in his Cosmos Trilogy spends time exploring both myth and science, fact and fiction. Quoth he:
In the library of the observatory in Ondrejov above Prague I once found a catalogue of stars that astounded me. It had hundreds of pages with tables of stars that had been observed and confirmed to exist. Towards the end there was a table of stars thought to have been observed but confirmed to NOT exist. But to my astonishment, at the back of the volume I found a list of stars which had never been observed and did not exist. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the universe is that we could create an infinite catalogue of things, worlds and beings that no one has seen and which do not exist. Each story in the realm of fiction is a small part of that catalogue.
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Somehow I think Winterson would agree with that. 3/5 for "Weight".
 
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

While I thoroughly enjoyed this, it definitely feels like the most light-weight of her novels that I've read so far - despite dealing with such a heavy subject; growing up gay in a very religious and repressive* community.

That's not necessarily a complaint, mind you. Dealing with heavy matters with a light (and drily humorous) touch without trivialising them is no easy feat, and Winterson pulls it off beautifully, often just hinting at the frustration and anger her young narrator feels ("I'd almost strangled the dog earlier that day," she mentions in passing at one point), and most importantly taking the other characters seriously. Hence the asterisk on "repressive", because there's no doubt that most of them would be horrified to hear themselves described as such; they genuinely think they're the good guys, and act accordingly. Likewise, "Jeanette" herself never becomes a simple figure; as messed-up as some aspects of her background are, it's all she's ever known, and it's not something to be given up lightly.

Which is why I think the fairytale bits work fine (if not perfectly - they're a little too clumsy for that). Part of what religion offers is transcendance, of being part of a bigger, older story. "Jeanette" handles being cast out of something she doesn't want to leave by recasting herself in other stories, redefining both her fate and her faith.

Winterson would go on to write better books, but it's still a cracking debut. :star4:
 
Anyone read The Stone Gods yet? Publisher's Weekly says:
Prize-winning Brit Winterson applies her fantastical touch to a sci-fi, postapocalyptic setting. Heroine Billie Crusoe appears in three different end-of-the-world scenarios, allowing Winterson to explore the repetitive and destructive nature of human history and an inability (or unwillingness) of people to learn from previous mistakes. In the first section, inhabitants of the pollution-choked planet Orbus have discovered Planet Blue (Earth), and soon set about launching an asteroid at it to kill the dinosaurs that would prevent them from colonizing the planet. The second and third sections are set on Earth in 1774 and then in the Post-3 War era. Though passionate condemnations of global warming and war appear frequently, the book also contains a triptych love story: Billie meets Spike, a female Robo sapien capable of emotion and evolution, and falls (reluctantly) in love with her. In each of the scenarios, Billie and Spike (or versions of them) fall in love anew while encroaching annihilation looms in the background. Winterson's lapses into polemic can be tedious, but her prose—as stunning, lyrical and evocative as ever—and intelligence easily carry the book.
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lenny nero said:
Anyone read The Stone Gods yet? Publisher's Weekly says:
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I read it and loved it. One of the best recent examples of how "genre" literature can be used to tackle big contemporary themes - she takes essentially the same story (Billie falls for the supposedly-not-quite-human Spike) and plays it out three times, in various combinations and variations, tackling different sides every time.
 
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