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Gut Symmetries: A Novel
 
 

Gut Symmetries: A Novel (Paperback)

by Jeanette Winterson (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 19.95
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Product Details


Product Description

From Amazon.com

Physics seems to have become the new language of love in the 1990s, and Jeanette Winterson is not the first writer to make a major character a physicist. Jonathan Lethem mined similar territory earlier this year in his delightful book, As She Climbed Across the Table, and now Winterson enters the lists with not one, but two physicists populating the pages of her equally wonderful book, Gut Symmetries. If you think about it, physics does make a good metaphor for love, encompassing as it does the principles of attraction, the exchange of energy, and unification. At the center of this meditation on "the intelligence of the universe" and "the stupidity of humankind" are Jove, a married physicist; Alice, a single physicist who becomes his mistress; and Stella, Jove's wife and later, Alice's lover. They meet on the QE2 and from there the three participants in the story take turns telling their versions of it.

Gut Symmetries is a collage of memories, snippets of scientific theory, meditations on abstract concepts like truth, and the events surrounding Jove, Alice, and Stella's affair. This is a book that demands your attention, jumping as it does from one seemingly tangential topic to another; but whereas physics still seeks a grand unification theory (GUT) to explain how everything in the universe fits together, Winterson actually finds one of her own in this satisfyingly complete fictional world. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.



From Library Journal

"Forgive me if I digress," says one character in this latest effort from the author of brilliant works like Written on the Body (LJ 2/15/93)?but you can't. The premise is so promising?the QE2 is sailing from Southampton to New York, and with the narrator lecturing on board about Paracelsus and the new physics, the reader naturally expects the sort of time-bending episodes and cool cultural assessment at which Winterson excels?that her failure to launch her own Ship of Fools is especially disappointing. A typically sharp-tongued and ambiguous Winterson character, the narrator conducts affairs with a husband and wife simultaneously (the husband, in fact, is a lecturer on time travel) but remains irksome and dull in the numerous platidinous observations that litter the page. Heavy-handed, humorless, and structurally fragmented, this is a grave disappointment from the talented Winterson. Buy only where her works are popular.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Gut Symmetries: A Novel
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Gut Symmetries: A Novel 3.7 out of 5 stars (17)
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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most helpful customer reviews

 
5.0 out of 5 stars Winterson at her finest., Mar 7 2001
By A Customer
This is by far Winterson's best novel. It demonstrates her ability to draw on an array of subjects (in this case: science,love, and fairytale) and craft them into a captivating story.
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3.0 out of 5 stars Not Winterson's Best, Dec 30 2000
By Gerrit Stoffer (Toronto Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gut Symmetries (Hardcover)
This is the third Winterson novel I've read, and I was disappointed. I read her novels because I admire her technique: she weaves the interesting aspects of physics and chemistry into the personal asepects of her characters. But in "Gut Symmetries" her refusal to follow any sort of "conventional" narrative left me craving more of a storyline. If you are thinking of buying a Winterson book, consider the much better "Written on the Body" (1992).
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2.0 out of 5 stars what is this book?, Jun 16 2000
By "flavamartino" (Wilmington, NC) - See all my reviews
OK, it's been a while since I've read this book, but I remember almost feeling tingles when I heard about it...I too, have thought that physics is the meaning of life, and I ADORE any considerate mediation on relationships, but alas this book was horrible. It may have been a huge letdown because I was looking forward to it so much as I LOVED "The Passion" and "Written on the Body". I found this book to be entirely tooooo tangental and poetic words leading into boxed up nothings.
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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite writing --
lyrical and poignant. And I basically give this book four stars for its writing. Yes, the plot is complicated and the themes are relevant and fascinating. Read more
Published on Jan 5 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars Fiction for the Serious Reader
If you have ever had any doubts, "Gut Symmetries" is proof that Wintersen's fiction demands an educated, intelligent reader who is serious about reading. Read more
Published on Jun 23 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Gut Symmetries may be history in the making...
As a student of the art of fiction, I have been increasingly depressed by the state of "literature" today...reading Gut Symmetries was a revelation! Read more
Published on Jun 1 1999

4.0 out of 5 stars mind opening
What I loved about this book is the way it completely debased our ways of usual ways of percieving the world and each other. Read more
Published on April 25 1999

3.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps I expect too much....
Perhaps reading this novel just after losing my son, and believing that Winterson as a writer of magical rescue from the human condition could do it for me now is expecting too... Read more
Published on Jan 2 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing call to re-think the world that surrounds us
Reading Gut Symmetries does not mean just reading a novel. There are many philosophical passages (a lot of them using physics and the new theories about how the way the world... Read more
Published on Nov 25 1998 by marga@poetic.com

1.0 out of 5 stars What was this book about?
Must be something wrong with me...I read to be entertained, often to learn something, always for the pure enjoyment of the story. Read more
Published on Nov 6 1998

1.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps the worst supposedly "literary" work I've read!
I was a bit suspicious of this book after reading the back, considering how familiar some of its ideas sounded. (Anyone ever hear of Tom Stoppard? Read more
Published on Aug 27 1998 by greggory@earthlink.net

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
I looked forward to this enormously, but was left with a "so what?" feeling at the end. Thomas Hardyesque coincidence about 2/3 of the way through (the previous... Read more
Published on Jul 18 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars First heard, then read - a pleasure each time.
For those of you who haven't had the chance to hear Jeanette Winterson read her work aloud, take any opportunity that comes your way: her words fly, sing, dance around your head... Read more
Published on Jun 5 1998 by 106146.3056@compuserve.com

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