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Review
“A fierce and funny exploration of her past and of what it means to belong.”
—The Telegraph
“At every turn . . . her fresh, vivid way of putting things stops one dead in admiration.”
—The New York Times
“She writes in flights of poetry. . . . She is equally deft with straightforward prose, in which she makes sharp, wry observations on her myriad themes—love, sex, technology, society, art, the life and death of the spirit.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Blazingly good.”
—Daily Mail
“Arguably the finest and most hopeful memoir to emerge in many years, and, as such, it really should not be missed.”
—The Times
“Breathtaking: witty, biblical, chatty and vigorous all at once.... Powerful.”
—Financial Times
“Remarkable…. Brave and beautiful, a testament to the forces of intelligence, heart and imagination. It is a marvellous book and a generous one.”
—The Spectator
—The Telegraph
“At every turn . . . her fresh, vivid way of putting things stops one dead in admiration.”
—The New York Times
“She writes in flights of poetry. . . . She is equally deft with straightforward prose, in which she makes sharp, wry observations on her myriad themes—love, sex, technology, society, art, the life and death of the spirit.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Blazingly good.”
—Daily Mail
“Arguably the finest and most hopeful memoir to emerge in many years, and, as such, it really should not be missed.”
—The Times
“Breathtaking: witty, biblical, chatty and vigorous all at once.... Powerful.”
—Financial Times
“Remarkable…. Brave and beautiful, a testament to the forces of intelligence, heart and imagination. It is a marvellous book and a generous one.”
—The Spectator
Book Description
Heartbreaking and funny: the true story behind Jeanette's bestselling and most beloved novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
In 1985, at twenty-five, Jeanette published Oranges, the story of a girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, supposed to grow up to be a missionary. Instead, she falls in love with a woman. Disaster.
Oranges became an international bestseller, inspired an award-winning BBC adaptation, and was semi-autobiographical. Mrs. Winterson, a thwarted giantess, loomed over the novel and the author's life: when Jeanette left home at sixteen because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: Why be happy when you could be normal? This is Jeanette's story--acute, fierce, celebratory--of a life's work to find happiness: a search for belonging, love, identity, a home.
About a young girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night, and a mother waiting for Armageddon with two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer; about growing up in a northern industrial town; about the Universe as a Cosmic Dustbin. She thought she had written over the painful past until it returned to haunt her and sent her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.
In 1985, at twenty-five, Jeanette published Oranges, the story of a girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, supposed to grow up to be a missionary. Instead, she falls in love with a woman. Disaster.
Oranges became an international bestseller, inspired an award-winning BBC adaptation, and was semi-autobiographical. Mrs. Winterson, a thwarted giantess, loomed over the novel and the author's life: when Jeanette left home at sixteen because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: Why be happy when you could be normal? This is Jeanette's story--acute, fierce, celebratory--of a life's work to find happiness: a search for belonging, love, identity, a home.
About a young girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night, and a mother waiting for Armageddon with two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer; about growing up in a northern industrial town; about the Universe as a Cosmic Dustbin. She thought she had written over the painful past until it returned to haunt her and sent her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I have no idea what happens next,
This review is from: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Hardcover)
Ever since my very dear friend Marc quoted from Jeanette Winterson's "Sexing the cherry"("No safety without risk, and what you risk reveals what you value") over dinner earlier this year, which led to my reading that book and, as soon as I could get my hands on them, her other books - I have been fascinated by the way the author tells her story through her stories; genuine and utterly vulnerable,brutally honest and direct, knowing both the limit and the interconnectedness between words and feelings, hauntingly beautiful."Why be happy when you could be normal" follows this tradition, but transcends it with a humanity that is deeply moving. While as a reader I agreed with her statement "I do not want to cry. I am crying."(page 184), despite sitting in an open air restaurant in Toronto for lunch on a beautiful day, by page 205 she had this reader in tears ("Darling girl"). The vulnerability that Jeanette (Janet) describes as her experience as an adopted child constructing her identity is really universal: adopted or not (and I am of course not in any way belittling the specific and highly problematic additional burden that adoption may bring) we are all living our lives doing our best to create meaning and understanding for what it is all about and for what we are all about. One of the best books I have ever read - with greatest admiration for its author: for the skill of her writing, and for the humanity she portraits.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Readable,
By
This review is from: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Hardcover)
I had read "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" years ago in my early twenties and I felt rather so-so about it, but the book popped back into my head again recently and I picked up my old copy last week and re-read it. My second reading a decade later was a different experience altogether. I enjoyed the book immensely. Afterwards, I did what always do after I've seen or read something that has moved me; I went online looking for further info. In particular, I was looking for interviews with it's author Jeanette Winterson. What did I find but a slew of new interviews that she had been doing for her new book "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" The timing was impecable. I took it as a sign and ran off and bought the book a day later.It's a terrific book. Winterson is a excelent and often funny writter. The book primarily focuses on her early childhood with Mrs Winterson (the name she always uses for her mother)and then skips ahead to the past few years when she finds her birth mother. I highly recommend it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stories are Compensatory,
By
This review is from: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Hardcover)
In the October 28th Guardian, Jeanette has an essay which retells the opening of Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? The retelling is as riveting as the original. In essay and book, Winterson portrays herself as a survivor. Her childhood reads like the darker parts of some Grimms fairytale, even if her telling of the story is often lightened by empathy. Here, for instance, is a description of her often abusive, book-burning, foster mother."She filled the phone box. She was out of scale, larger than life. She was like a fairy story where size is approximate and unstable. She loomed up. She expanded. Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she was to herself. The baby nobody picked up. The uncarried child still inside her." A later passage reads: "Babies are frightening - raw tyrants whose only kingdom is their own body. My new mother had a lot of problems with the body - her own, my dad's, their bodies together, and mine. She had muffled her own body in flesh and clothes, suppressed its appetites with a fearful mixture of nicotine and Jesus, dosed it with purgatives that made her vomit, submitted it to doctors, who administered enemas and pelvic rings, subdued its desires for ordinary touch and comfort. Then suddenly, not out of her own body, and with no preparation, she had a thing that was all body. A burping, vomiting, sprawling faecal thing blasting the house with rude life." Jeanette makes it hard not to feel some sympathy, even for twisted Mrs. Winterson. Like many patremoirs, Winterson's matremoir is as much about the power of storytelling as it is about the parent. Good writers know how words create reality, and when writing about their parents, they are also acutely aware of how "Truth for anyone is a very complex thing." Also, as Jeanette goes on to say, "For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include." Much of the essay, and presumably the book, is about how Jeanette used books and words to survive and alter the darkness of her world. For her, "Stories are compensatory." One last quotation from the essay, and then I'm off to try to find a copy of the book: "Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear ... Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world." Andre Gerard Editor of Fathers: A Literary Anthology
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