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Written on the Body
Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Jeanette Winterson
103 books7,036 followersNovelist Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester, England in 1959. She was adopted and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing provides the background to her acclaimed first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, published in 1985. She graduated from St Catherine's College, Oxford, and moved to London where she worked as an assistant editor at Pandora Press.
One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Winterson was named as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in a promotion run jointly between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council.
She adapted Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for BBC television in 1990 and also wrote "Great Moments in Aviation," a television screenplay directed by Beeban Kidron for BBC2 in 1994. She is editor of a series of new editions of novels by Virginia Woolf published in the UK by Vintage. She is a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many newspapers and journals and has a regular column published in The Guardian. Her radio drama includes the play Text Message, broadcast by BBC Radio in November 2001.
Winterson lives in Gloucestershire and London. Her work is published in 28 countries.
One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Winterson was named as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in a promotion run jointly between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council.
She adapted Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for BBC television in 1990 and also wrote "Great Moments in Aviation," a television screenplay directed by Beeban Kidron for BBC2 in 1994. She is editor of a series of new editions of novels by Virginia Woolf published in the UK by Vintage. She is a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many newspapers and journals and has a regular column published in The Guardian. Her radio drama includes the play Text Message, broadcast by BBC Radio in November 2001.
Winterson lives in Gloucestershire and London. Her work is published in 28 countries.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,810 reviews
February 8, 2023
Hmm. Immediate lifelong favorite. Very sexy, smart, funny, devastating. I will think about it forever. Love? Longing? Loss? Truth? Sex? Righteousness? Martyrdom? How close selfishness and selflessness live to each other? Personally, I’m gay.
August 4, 2024
‘Why is the measure of love loss?’
Jeanette Winterson wields words in ways that seem to unlock entire universes hidden in plain sight, her meditations always blossoming into poetic beauty that keeps the reader in a state of literary rapture. Though there is no blossom without thorns, and her fourth novel, Written on the Body, emotionally stings as much as it seduces. More straightforward than her previous works, constructed more through poetic musings than narrative while still feeling very forward moving and not overly ponderous. In Written, Winterson has no need for her usual magical realism as every sentence is magic in its own right as she writes through a narrator with no gender indicators having a passionate love affair with a married woman. Written on the Body is a deep meditation on the body and frequently forces the reader to examine their own assumptions while playing with both genre and gender in a novel where language is employed as both sexual and subjective as Winterson seizes upon cliches in order to construct something wholly new and unique.
‘The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm.’
There is a noticeable shift upon embarking into Winterson’s fourth novel. It is as if suddenly all the elements she cultivated in her previous three novels slid into place, like shards of a broken crystal in fantasy stories, and their union creates a beam of pure poetic light. Each sentence feels effortless yet teeming with power, as if she found the shortcut directly to perfection, and her prose cuts into heady subjects with such grace to let all the philosophical ideas rain down upon the reader. While this novel hits with heavy emotional punches, it is also laugh out loud funny, with Winterson gleefully examining bad relationships and mishaps with gems of lines like ‘She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings,’ or more biting wit such as ‘she was a Roman Cardinal, chaste, but for the perfect choirboy.’ As one should expect with Winterson, nothing is simplistic and Written on the Body subverts or resists being pigeonholed at every turn, even breaking away from the formal narrative just over halfway through into a series of near-prose poems about the body, love, and the destructive grip of cancer.
For many, when it was released in 1993, the novel was most notable for its lack of gender identification of the narrator. Winterson brilliantly teases expectations and forces the reader to confront their own ideas of gender and sexuality (though it was also criticized as being “inadequately feminist” for presenting a non-specific and likely non-binary narrator). The narrator details many past relationships, most often affairs with married women, before settling down in a passionless but routine and safe relationship with an unremarkable zoo keeper (it manages to not feel like an overly heavy handed metaphor through how blithe and zany the streak of previous relationships are told). Later we learn of their previous relationships with men. This is all a literary game to examine expectations of performing gender, instead discarding gender to focus purely on the emotions of love. As well as a statement on gender as being fluid, not unlike Villanelle in The Passion, or how a character lives as a woman for awhile in Sexing the Cherry to gain a better insight into gendered society and finds they prefer it as a woman, or an identity shared by myself and Winterson. When questioned about gender fluidity in an interview with The Paris Review, Winterson responded ‘I no longer care whether somebody's male or female. I just don't care,’ and that ‘ I don't think that love should be a gender-bound operation.,’ while more recently saying she finds for herself that ‘gender identity is more fluid.’ As her novels tend to resist singular interpretation, any readings of the character as subverting gender performance expectations, being bisexual, or gender fluid are all likely valid and not necessarily mutually exclusive.
‘You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?’
What is certain in this novel is the pure beauty and passion. This is a novel about love, but it rejects being a romance novel. This is a novel about illness and long investigations into how cancer and the body works, but this is not a medical novel. This is a novel about grief, but it is not a grief novel. ‘It’s the clichés that cause the trouble,’ the narrator writes, and Winterson revels in transforming cliched moments into something uniquely hers. ‘I don't want to reproduce, I want to create something entirely new.’ There is something so ineffably charming that the narrator is, in fact, a translator (from Russian to be precise), not only translating the traditional narrative into something post-modern and dynamic but simultaneously finding themselves translated in their lover’s hands.
The body is central to this novel, with frequent passages detailing the delights of or desires for the body—particularly her lover, Louise’s body&mdash. In one of the many reflections on the body that allude to the Song of Solomon of the Bible, Winterson meditates on how the part of the body we touch are the dead skin cells, ‘the dead you is constatnly being rubbed away by the dead me,’ acknowledging the body as the vessel, fragile, temporary, through which we love one another.
'Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. To remember you, it’s my own body I touch. Thus she was, here and here. The physical memory blunders through the doors the mind has tried to seal. A skeleton key to Bluebeard’s chamber. The bloody key that unlocks pain. Wisdom says forget, the body howls. Thus she was, here and here.'
Winterson uses specific language to the interactions of the body, frequently terms like ‘discovery’ and ‘voyage’ that recall ships at sea headed to new lands. However, love, we find, is not one of colonization—something that could be argued is Louise’s husband, Elgin’s, interpretation of love and his desire to own and control her—but one of mutual discovery and collaboration.
In a passage that recalls a central theme to her earlier novel, The Passion, the narrator reflects ‘There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.’ Their discovery of Louise opens the possibility of lack of Louise, and just when they unite most, the narrator unattached and flees (for complicated reasons you’ll have to read the novel to discover yourself) in the belief that their sacrifice of love is made for love because they truly value Louise.
There are several nods to The Passion here, even beyond the love interest being characterized by untamed, fiery red hair such as Winterson’s direct shoutout to the refrain ‘trust me, I’m telling you stories,’ and adding ‘I can change the story. I am the story.’ This is the metafiction territory I really enjoy and where Winterson manages to border into magic without her use of magical realism. Confronted by their boss, Gail, a woman who openly asserts her desire for the narrator in the face of the narrator’s relative disinterest (a great line about how even when you lose your looks you don’t lose your desire for another ensues here), the narrator is accused of considering Louise less as a person and more as a character they have created. A character in their own story of useless martyrdom. ‘It's as if Louise never existed,’' the narrator muses, ‘like a character in a book. Did I invent her?’ In a novel so tuned into language and its many forms, this becomes a story less about the impact of love but the flaws of language to properly reproduce love, all questioning if our language of love creates a character out of the beloved or if we, truly, love them as being-in-itself to riff on Heidegger. Yet, ‘love demands expression.’ She quotes Caliban from The Tempest: ‘You taught me language; and my profit on't/Is, I know how to curse./The red plague rid you/For learning me your language! ’ This novel is about the possibilities of giving linguistic life to love.
‘Is this the proper ending? If not the proper then the inevitable?’
Sadly, this novel is also about giving life to the grief that follows the absence of love. The narrator goes through a stage-of-grief of sorts, even visiting a church to be in the presence of other people’s faith, or attending a random funeral they stumble upon in which the reader is treated to some jaw-dropping and heartbreaking philosophizing about death of a loved one, the end of the body:
In her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Winterson states ‘There are three kinds of big endings: Revenge. Tragedy. Forgiveness.’ She adds that ‘Revenge and tragedy often happen together. Forgiveness redeems the past. Forgiveness unblocks the future.’ This novel is the possibility of all three in one. There is the revenge scene, deliciously wicked and violent (I love it when Winterson chooses violence) all in the face of tragedy. Yet there is hope, a letting go of the past that aims directly towards the future. The narrator has gone on a journey of discovery, gone into exile, and has now returned with a lesson learned and a horizon to continue chasing. It is the hero's journey as a romance novel, it is the fairy tale of love and language.
‘You deciphered me and now I am plain to read. The message is a simple one; my love for you. I want you to live. Forgive my mistakes. Forgive me.’
I could rant about Winterson all day, as I’ve basically done patchworking this review together over the span of 24hrs. She speaks to me though, and each work is a unique and dazzling display of both heart and mind eager to create, to style, and to show it all to you. But mostly, Winterson has a direct prose that soars. Written on the Body is a fantastic work that teases expectations only to subvert them, taking you to the precipice of the cliche and through a magical portal into a brilliant realm of literary extravagance. She exposes constructs and dismantles them, such as gender performance, genre narratives and even marriage (‘marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire.’) and embarks with the reader on a love affair with language and experimentation. This is a showstopper of a novel and one that will live rent-free in my heart.
5/5
‘I don’t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.’
Jeanette Winterson wields words in ways that seem to unlock entire universes hidden in plain sight, her meditations always blossoming into poetic beauty that keeps the reader in a state of literary rapture. Though there is no blossom without thorns, and her fourth novel, Written on the Body, emotionally stings as much as it seduces. More straightforward than her previous works, constructed more through poetic musings than narrative while still feeling very forward moving and not overly ponderous. In Written, Winterson has no need for her usual magical realism as every sentence is magic in its own right as she writes through a narrator with no gender indicators having a passionate love affair with a married woman. Written on the Body is a deep meditation on the body and frequently forces the reader to examine their own assumptions while playing with both genre and gender in a novel where language is employed as both sexual and subjective as Winterson seizes upon cliches in order to construct something wholly new and unique.
‘The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm.’
There is a noticeable shift upon embarking into Winterson’s fourth novel. It is as if suddenly all the elements she cultivated in her previous three novels slid into place, like shards of a broken crystal in fantasy stories, and their union creates a beam of pure poetic light. Each sentence feels effortless yet teeming with power, as if she found the shortcut directly to perfection, and her prose cuts into heady subjects with such grace to let all the philosophical ideas rain down upon the reader. While this novel hits with heavy emotional punches, it is also laugh out loud funny, with Winterson gleefully examining bad relationships and mishaps with gems of lines like ‘She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings,’ or more biting wit such as ‘she was a Roman Cardinal, chaste, but for the perfect choirboy.’ As one should expect with Winterson, nothing is simplistic and Written on the Body subverts or resists being pigeonholed at every turn, even breaking away from the formal narrative just over halfway through into a series of near-prose poems about the body, love, and the destructive grip of cancer.
For many, when it was released in 1993, the novel was most notable for its lack of gender identification of the narrator. Winterson brilliantly teases expectations and forces the reader to confront their own ideas of gender and sexuality (though it was also criticized as being “inadequately feminist” for presenting a non-specific and likely non-binary narrator). The narrator details many past relationships, most often affairs with married women, before settling down in a passionless but routine and safe relationship with an unremarkable zoo keeper (it manages to not feel like an overly heavy handed metaphor through how blithe and zany the streak of previous relationships are told). Later we learn of their previous relationships with men. This is all a literary game to examine expectations of performing gender, instead discarding gender to focus purely on the emotions of love. As well as a statement on gender as being fluid, not unlike Villanelle in The Passion, or how a character lives as a woman for awhile in Sexing the Cherry to gain a better insight into gendered society and finds they prefer it as a woman, or an identity shared by myself and Winterson. When questioned about gender fluidity in an interview with The Paris Review, Winterson responded ‘I no longer care whether somebody's male or female. I just don't care,’ and that ‘ I don't think that love should be a gender-bound operation.,’ while more recently saying she finds for herself that ‘gender identity is more fluid.’ As her novels tend to resist singular interpretation, any readings of the character as subverting gender performance expectations, being bisexual, or gender fluid are all likely valid and not necessarily mutually exclusive.
‘You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?’
What is certain in this novel is the pure beauty and passion. This is a novel about love, but it rejects being a romance novel. This is a novel about illness and long investigations into how cancer and the body works, but this is not a medical novel. This is a novel about grief, but it is not a grief novel. ‘It’s the clichés that cause the trouble,’ the narrator writes, and Winterson revels in transforming cliched moments into something uniquely hers. ‘I don't want to reproduce, I want to create something entirely new.’ There is something so ineffably charming that the narrator is, in fact, a translator (from Russian to be precise), not only translating the traditional narrative into something post-modern and dynamic but simultaneously finding themselves translated in their lover’s hands.
‘Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, meaning into my body.’
The body is central to this novel, with frequent passages detailing the delights of or desires for the body—particularly her lover, Louise’s body&mdash. In one of the many reflections on the body that allude to the Song of Solomon of the Bible, Winterson meditates on how the part of the body we touch are the dead skin cells, ‘the dead you is constatnly being rubbed away by the dead me,’ acknowledging the body as the vessel, fragile, temporary, through which we love one another.
'Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. To remember you, it’s my own body I touch. Thus she was, here and here. The physical memory blunders through the doors the mind has tried to seal. A skeleton key to Bluebeard’s chamber. The bloody key that unlocks pain. Wisdom says forget, the body howls. Thus she was, here and here.'
Winterson uses specific language to the interactions of the body, frequently terms like ‘discovery’ and ‘voyage’ that recall ships at sea headed to new lands. However, love, we find, is not one of colonization—something that could be argued is Louise’s husband, Elgin’s, interpretation of love and his desire to own and control her—but one of mutual discovery and collaboration.
‘Louise, in this single bed, between these garish sheets, I will find a map as likely as any treasure hunt. I will explore you and mine you and you will redraw me according to your will. We shall cross one another's boundaries and make ourselves one nation.’
In a passage that recalls a central theme to her earlier novel, The Passion, the narrator reflects ‘There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.’ Their discovery of Louise opens the possibility of lack of Louise, and just when they unite most, the narrator unattached and flees (for complicated reasons you’ll have to read the novel to discover yourself) in the belief that their sacrifice of love is made for love because they truly value Louise.
There are several nods to The Passion here, even beyond the love interest being characterized by untamed, fiery red hair such as Winterson’s direct shoutout to the refrain ‘trust me, I’m telling you stories,’ and adding ‘I can change the story. I am the story.’ This is the metafiction territory I really enjoy and where Winterson manages to border into magic without her use of magical realism. Confronted by their boss, Gail, a woman who openly asserts her desire for the narrator in the face of the narrator’s relative disinterest (a great line about how even when you lose your looks you don’t lose your desire for another ensues here), the narrator is accused of considering Louise less as a person and more as a character they have created. A character in their own story of useless martyrdom. ‘It's as if Louise never existed,’' the narrator muses, ‘like a character in a book. Did I invent her?’ In a novel so tuned into language and its many forms, this becomes a story less about the impact of love but the flaws of language to properly reproduce love, all questioning if our language of love creates a character out of the beloved or if we, truly, love them as being-in-itself to riff on Heidegger. Yet, ‘love demands expression.’ She quotes Caliban from The Tempest: ‘You taught me language; and my profit on't/Is, I know how to curse./The red plague rid you/For learning me your language! ’ This novel is about the possibilities of giving linguistic life to love.
‘Is this the proper ending? If not the proper then the inevitable?’
Sadly, this novel is also about giving life to the grief that follows the absence of love. The narrator goes through a stage-of-grief of sorts, even visiting a church to be in the presence of other people’s faith, or attending a random funeral they stumble upon in which the reader is treated to some jaw-dropping and heartbreaking philosophizing about death of a loved one, the end of the body:
‘The body that has lain beside you in sickness and in health. The body your arms still long for dead or not. You were intimate with every muscle, privy to the eyelids moving in sleep. This is the body where your name is written, passing into the hands of strangers.’
In her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Winterson states ‘There are three kinds of big endings: Revenge. Tragedy. Forgiveness.’ She adds that ‘Revenge and tragedy often happen together. Forgiveness redeems the past. Forgiveness unblocks the future.’ This novel is the possibility of all three in one. There is the revenge scene, deliciously wicked and violent (I love it when Winterson chooses violence) all in the face of tragedy. Yet there is hope, a letting go of the past that aims directly towards the future. The narrator has gone on a journey of discovery, gone into exile, and has now returned with a lesson learned and a horizon to continue chasing. It is the hero's journey as a romance novel, it is the fairy tale of love and language.
‘You deciphered me and now I am plain to read. The message is a simple one; my love for you. I want you to live. Forgive my mistakes. Forgive me.’
I could rant about Winterson all day, as I’ve basically done patchworking this review together over the span of 24hrs. She speaks to me though, and each work is a unique and dazzling display of both heart and mind eager to create, to style, and to show it all to you. But mostly, Winterson has a direct prose that soars. Written on the Body is a fantastic work that teases expectations only to subvert them, taking you to the precipice of the cliche and through a magical portal into a brilliant realm of literary extravagance. She exposes constructs and dismantles them, such as gender performance, genre narratives and even marriage (‘marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire.’) and embarks with the reader on a love affair with language and experimentation. This is a showstopper of a novel and one that will live rent-free in my heart.
5/5
‘I don’t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.’
April 7, 2008
You know how it is when your friends fall madly in love with someone (a new girlfriend), or something (Guitar Hero, Battlestar Galactica), and wear you out during the honeymoon phase babbling on about his/her/its awesomeness, sometimes in excruciating detail? If you're not in a similar situation, or worse, wish you were, it's damn near unendurable.
For God's sake, don't read this book unless you can stand to read about sheer, uninhibited passion, often in graphic detail. The pointedly genderless narrator, having wandered through the nooks and crannies of various male and female lovers, falls head over heels for Louise, and, when foolish enough to lose her, spends roughly a third of the book singing paeans to her entire body. It's Winterson at her most self-indulgent, but in this case, her enthusiasm is well-suited to its subject. If you've ever been stupid in love with someone, you can sympathize with narrator x, and appreciate Winterson's matchless style.
Definitely a book you've got to be in the right mood for, by which I mean if you're in an unhappy relationship or you aren't seeing anyone and wish you were, or God help you just got dumped, stay the hell away. If you're bazonkers about someone right now or otherwise don't mind, read this, it will thrill you.
For God's sake, don't read this book unless you can stand to read about sheer, uninhibited passion, often in graphic detail. The pointedly genderless narrator, having wandered through the nooks and crannies of various male and female lovers, falls head over heels for Louise, and, when foolish enough to lose her, spends roughly a third of the book singing paeans to her entire body. It's Winterson at her most self-indulgent, but in this case, her enthusiasm is well-suited to its subject. If you've ever been stupid in love with someone, you can sympathize with narrator x, and appreciate Winterson's matchless style.
Definitely a book you've got to be in the right mood for, by which I mean if you're in an unhappy relationship or you aren't seeing anyone and wish you were, or God help you just got dumped, stay the hell away. If you're bazonkers about someone right now or otherwise don't mind, read this, it will thrill you.
September 19, 2020
“The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before I met you, I relied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut.”
I got completely lost in this book, in a good way. I was wholly wrapped up in the writing, basking in the beauty of the prose. I’ve not read a lot of Jeanette Winterson yet, but what I know so far is that she is like a composer of music. Her words are a song that serenades the listener; this novel an exquisite ballad. When the breathless hush blankets the crowd after the conclusion of the piece, my greatest desire is to experience it all over again.
“I’ve tried to get you out of my head but I can’t seem to get you out of my flesh. I think about your body day and night. When I try to read it’s you I’m reading. When I sit down to eat it’s you I’m eating. When he touches me I think about you.”
The skin of this story is an affair between a married woman and a narrator whose gender remains unnamed throughout. The flesh is the grand passion between these two, the sensuality of two bodies joined together. At the pit or core you will find unconditional, selfless love.
“I don’t want to be your sport nor you to be mine. I don’t want to punch you for the pleasure of it, tangling the clear lines that bind us, forcing you to your knees, dragging you up again. The public face of a life in chaos. I want the hoop around our hearts to be a guide not a terror.”
The middle section reads like a poem about the various landscapes of a lover’s body. The beautiful verses still resound in my head. I was ready to forgive Winterson for overlooking a plot to her novel, until I realized there in fact was one. Beneath all that seductive style, a story is revealed. It shook me up and then crushed me. I loved it.
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought.”
I got completely lost in this book, in a good way. I was wholly wrapped up in the writing, basking in the beauty of the prose. I’ve not read a lot of Jeanette Winterson yet, but what I know so far is that she is like a composer of music. Her words are a song that serenades the listener; this novel an exquisite ballad. When the breathless hush blankets the crowd after the conclusion of the piece, my greatest desire is to experience it all over again.
“I’ve tried to get you out of my head but I can’t seem to get you out of my flesh. I think about your body day and night. When I try to read it’s you I’m reading. When I sit down to eat it’s you I’m eating. When he touches me I think about you.”
The skin of this story is an affair between a married woman and a narrator whose gender remains unnamed throughout. The flesh is the grand passion between these two, the sensuality of two bodies joined together. At the pit or core you will find unconditional, selfless love.
“I don’t want to be your sport nor you to be mine. I don’t want to punch you for the pleasure of it, tangling the clear lines that bind us, forcing you to your knees, dragging you up again. The public face of a life in chaos. I want the hoop around our hearts to be a guide not a terror.”
The middle section reads like a poem about the various landscapes of a lover’s body. The beautiful verses still resound in my head. I was ready to forgive Winterson for overlooking a plot to her novel, until I realized there in fact was one. Beneath all that seductive style, a story is revealed. It shook me up and then crushed me. I loved it.
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought.”
June 6, 2018
A genderless narrator leafs through past affairs with men and women, contrasting them with his/her present relationship with Louise, a married woman.
What I most admired about Winterson’s approach to this tragic romance is the naturalness with which she approaches homosexual and bisexual relationships, which makes a case for the idea that gender is but a sociocultural construct, a concept that certainly shouldn’t define the traits of any relationship, or in this case, of the narrator, who seems humane and very plausible even without attributed male or female stereotyped features.
Another aspect that I found remarkable was the middle section of the novel, which is devoted to create an ode to the body of the lover, some sort of poetic exaltation about every inch of the beloved’s flesh, even her cells and tissues, presenting them as virgin territories to discover, to bask in, and finally, to conquer.
Why my temperate response, then? *spoilers ahead*
I thought the story didn’t need the element of a terminal illness to make a point about loving and losing the person who finally teaches us selfless love.
In addition, the narrator’s point of view is contemplative and locked within his/her version of events, and even though the novel is replete with memorable quotes, I was a bit overwhelmed with the exuberant stylistic resources employed to draw the narrator’s inner world.
The ending is open to interpretation, and that gave the escalating pace of the last pages an anti-climatic closure, and I couldn’t help but compare it with Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room”, a novel that deals with similar issues and offers a broader and, in my opinion, subtler but more incisive vision of love, loss and grief without employing sentimentality as the final trick. Giovanni’s empty room shook me a thousand times more than Winterson’s veneration of a lover’s body.
What I most admired about Winterson’s approach to this tragic romance is the naturalness with which she approaches homosexual and bisexual relationships, which makes a case for the idea that gender is but a sociocultural construct, a concept that certainly shouldn’t define the traits of any relationship, or in this case, of the narrator, who seems humane and very plausible even without attributed male or female stereotyped features.
Another aspect that I found remarkable was the middle section of the novel, which is devoted to create an ode to the body of the lover, some sort of poetic exaltation about every inch of the beloved’s flesh, even her cells and tissues, presenting them as virgin territories to discover, to bask in, and finally, to conquer.
Why my temperate response, then? *spoilers ahead*
I thought the story didn’t need the element of a terminal illness to make a point about loving and losing the person who finally teaches us selfless love.
In addition, the narrator’s point of view is contemplative and locked within his/her version of events, and even though the novel is replete with memorable quotes, I was a bit overwhelmed with the exuberant stylistic resources employed to draw the narrator’s inner world.
The ending is open to interpretation, and that gave the escalating pace of the last pages an anti-climatic closure, and I couldn’t help but compare it with Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room”, a novel that deals with similar issues and offers a broader and, in my opinion, subtler but more incisive vision of love, loss and grief without employing sentimentality as the final trick. Giovanni’s empty room shook me a thousand times more than Winterson’s veneration of a lover’s body.
November 9, 2017
It is hard to review Jeanette Winterson.
Every single one of her short novels is a work of art, beautiful and painfully true while magically exploring the limits of reality.
I read The Passion and thought I would not like it, because I don't do historical fiction. It was breath-taking, unbelievable, eye-opening. The recurring theme accompanies me ever since: "Somewhere between fear and sex, passion is."
I read Sexing the Cherry and thought I could not possibly like it more, because The Passion made such an impression on me, and I was blown away. Pure magic!
To evaluate the other novels by her I have read, I have to reread them, because the language and the plot are always so carefully interlinked, it is hard to explain the massive effect of her words from memory. This weekend I started the process with Written On The Body, which I remembered only vaguely, thinking I had liked it despite not being fond of love stories. And I swear, the book now is tattooed, written into my soul. Picking up the recurring themes of desire, passion, and deceit, it explores the nature of love against all odds, against rational thinking, against one's own body.
The main idea is to describe the complete surrender a person experiences when he or she loves unconditionally, and how that leaves traces, not only on the soul, but on the body itself. The intensity of the feeling is engraved on the body.
It is shockingly honest in its approach to adultery, deceit, and the randomness of love. Love is all-consuming, but rarely something purely beautiful. Its start can be a banality, the door to love opened by accident:
“Her butler opened it for her. His name was Boredom. She said, 'Boredom, fetch me a plaything.' He said 'Very good ma'am,' and putting on his white gloves so that fingerprints would not show he tapped at my heart and I thought he said his name was Love.”
As always, Winterson mixes deep feelings with sarcastic comical effects:
"It would have been good to have lain down there and made love under the moon, but the truth is that, outside of the movies and the Country and Western songs, the outdoors is an itchy business."
The nameless main character plays many different relationship roles over the course of the story. The adventurous affair, the unhappy love, the comfortable stable partnership:
"I was rigorous, hard working and... and... what was that word with B again?
You're bored, my friend said.
I protested with all the fervour of a teetotaller caught glancing at the bottle. I was content. I had settled."
And then the big LOVE strikes, the one that goes straight through the body and soul and leaves the character marked for life, literally. No rational thinking helps:
"Wisdom says forget. The body howls."
In the end, there is something like a happy ending, a beginning as well, a couple of human beings let loose in the open fields.
This is a Winterson, through and through, every word weighing heavily, every emotion raw.
Read it if you can bear to have the pain of love written on your body.
Every single one of her short novels is a work of art, beautiful and painfully true while magically exploring the limits of reality.
I read The Passion and thought I would not like it, because I don't do historical fiction. It was breath-taking, unbelievable, eye-opening. The recurring theme accompanies me ever since: "Somewhere between fear and sex, passion is."
I read Sexing the Cherry and thought I could not possibly like it more, because The Passion made such an impression on me, and I was blown away. Pure magic!
To evaluate the other novels by her I have read, I have to reread them, because the language and the plot are always so carefully interlinked, it is hard to explain the massive effect of her words from memory. This weekend I started the process with Written On The Body, which I remembered only vaguely, thinking I had liked it despite not being fond of love stories. And I swear, the book now is tattooed, written into my soul. Picking up the recurring themes of desire, passion, and deceit, it explores the nature of love against all odds, against rational thinking, against one's own body.
The main idea is to describe the complete surrender a person experiences when he or she loves unconditionally, and how that leaves traces, not only on the soul, but on the body itself. The intensity of the feeling is engraved on the body.
It is shockingly honest in its approach to adultery, deceit, and the randomness of love. Love is all-consuming, but rarely something purely beautiful. Its start can be a banality, the door to love opened by accident:
“Her butler opened it for her. His name was Boredom. She said, 'Boredom, fetch me a plaything.' He said 'Very good ma'am,' and putting on his white gloves so that fingerprints would not show he tapped at my heart and I thought he said his name was Love.”
As always, Winterson mixes deep feelings with sarcastic comical effects:
"It would have been good to have lain down there and made love under the moon, but the truth is that, outside of the movies and the Country and Western songs, the outdoors is an itchy business."
The nameless main character plays many different relationship roles over the course of the story. The adventurous affair, the unhappy love, the comfortable stable partnership:
"I was rigorous, hard working and... and... what was that word with B again?
You're bored, my friend said.
I protested with all the fervour of a teetotaller caught glancing at the bottle. I was content. I had settled."
And then the big LOVE strikes, the one that goes straight through the body and soul and leaves the character marked for life, literally. No rational thinking helps:
"Wisdom says forget. The body howls."
In the end, there is something like a happy ending, a beginning as well, a couple of human beings let loose in the open fields.
This is a Winterson, through and through, every word weighing heavily, every emotion raw.
Read it if you can bear to have the pain of love written on your body.
April 10, 2019
On the surface, this is a sensual, reflective, and sometimes humorous recollection of the narrator’s loves won and lost, compared with the current one. Unwelcome news triggers a difficult choice, with huge ramifications. It was made with love, but was it the right decision, and did the narrator even have the right to make it? It’s a curious amalgam of styles, yet unmistakably Winterson, including a set of short, more abstract sections, and the fact the bisexual narrator’s gender is unspecified.
But peel back the gilt and what’s beneath is not so straightforward. All the best literature has a unique message for every reader, on each encounter. Gilt reflects: what spoke to me is not what you will hear and respond to.
Image: Antique mirror (Source.)
I found this shockingly, painfully good. I knew it was about relationships and was ambiguous about gender, but I was unprepared for the raw dissection of loss. It punched hard, but was shot through with love. Definitely the right book at the right time for me.
“ Why is the measure of love loss? ”
The opening line, repeated later, brought tears. It’s the converse of my recent experience of grief as the price of love - love with nowhere to go. But nevertheless, and without question, “Love is worth it”.
"You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved."
Image: My father’s keys, his writing instantly recognisable from just four letters.
“No-one tells you in grief-counselling or books on loss what it will be like when you find part of the beloved unexpectedly.”
Love is…
“I went to church… I wanted the comfort of other people’s faith.”
The Bible of her childhood infuses atheist Winterson’s writing, and this is no exception: phrases, ideas, and liturgical repetition and rhythm. Here, it’s most obvious in how the “emotional nomad” writes about love:
“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no.”
and
“No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”
From 1 Corinthians 13, v4-8 (NIV):
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
But I don’t think the Bible is right: love can fail:
“What then kills love? Only this: neglect.”
The other message, from way back in 1992, is that gender doesn’t matter; there is no question or hand-wringing; it’s not relevant to the story.
Image: “Love is love” in current parlance. (Source.)
Marriage
“Is happiness always a compromise?”
“Contentment… are you sure it’s not an absence of feeling?”
In my teens, I remember my father quoting (allegedly) Prince Philip: “Marriage is the highest form of prostitution”. There is truth in that, touched on repeatedly here. We all exchange things for sex and love: our motives are mixed and rarely pure. And the promises of marriage can be hard to keep.
“Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire.”
“Cheating is easy… To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first.”
The Translator, Translated
“Articulacy of the fingers… signing on the body body longing.”
“Your flesh is my flesh. You deciphered me and now I am plain to read.”
The narrator is a translator (there are many references to great literature, as usual for Winterson), but better in abstract than with those they love, let alone themself.
“Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights… In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille… I didn’t know that Louse would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.”
Bio-anatomical Prose Poetry
“I know the stigmata of presumption.”
There are no chapters, but two-thirds through, there are four short sections that defy easy description: semi-abstract musings on cells, skin, skeleton, and “special senses”, as the narrator agonises over anticipatory loss in a profound and sensual way.
“To remember you it’s my own body I touch.”
Ending
“Is this the proper ending? If not the proper then the inevitable?”
As I approached the end, I was nervous: I wasn’t sure what a happy ending would be, but knew I didn't want one. I need not have feared. It is everything and nothing - interpret as you like. I could quote the whole closing paragraph, without fear of spoilers.
In her brilliant autobiography, Why be Happy when you Could be Normal? (see my review HERE), Winterson categorises three types of ending: revenge, tragedy and forgiveness. Both books contain all three.
Other Quotes
Memory of Love
• “How easy is it to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it?”
• “Wisdom says forget. The body howls.”
• “I’ve tried to get you out of my head but I can’t seem to get you out of my flesh.”
• “I don’t want to be reminded of you, I want you.”
• “The power of memory is such that it can lift reality for a time.”
Relationships and Fallout
• “I used to think of marriage as a plate-glass window just begging for a brick.”
• “Odd that marriage, a public display and free to all, gives way to that most secret of liaisons, an adulterous affair.”
• “I had to keep my heart to myself in case I infected somebody” with “emotional clap”.
• “You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time.”
• “I had no dreams to possess you - but I wanted you to possess me.”
• “With old friends… you know one another as well as lovers do and you have less to pretend about” - so you’re more likely to be honest.
Dry Humour
• “The ultimate act of selfishness; a woman who put herself first.”
• “Her husband lies over her like a tarpaulin.”
• “The women wore their jewellery like medals… a palimpsest of love-affairs” on show at the opera.
• “I’d run my hands over her padded flesh with all the enthusiasm of a second-hand sofa dealer.”
• “They considered themselves to be Australian aristocracy, that is, they were descended from convicts.”
• “She had a steady hand but she like to spill. It made work for her daughter.”
Other
• “What you risk reveals what you value.”
• “People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.”
Winterson is queen of the extended metaphor. This is one of many (others include maps, animals, jigsaws):
“When she lifted the soup spoon to her lips how I longed to be that innocent piece of stainless steel… Let me be diced carrot, vermicelli, just so that you will take me in your mouth. I envied the French stick. I watched her break and butter each piece, soak it slowly in her bowl, let it float, grow heavy and fat, sink under the deep red weight and then be resurrected to the glorious pleasure of her teeth… I will taste you if only through your cooking.”
But peel back the gilt and what’s beneath is not so straightforward. All the best literature has a unique message for every reader, on each encounter. Gilt reflects: what spoke to me is not what you will hear and respond to.
Image: Antique mirror (Source.)
I found this shockingly, painfully good. I knew it was about relationships and was ambiguous about gender, but I was unprepared for the raw dissection of loss. It punched hard, but was shot through with love. Definitely the right book at the right time for me.
“ Why is the measure of love loss? ”
The opening line, repeated later, brought tears. It’s the converse of my recent experience of grief as the price of love - love with nowhere to go. But nevertheless, and without question, “Love is worth it”.
"You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved."
Image: My father’s keys, his writing instantly recognisable from just four letters.
“No-one tells you in grief-counselling or books on loss what it will be like when you find part of the beloved unexpectedly.”
Love is…
“I went to church… I wanted the comfort of other people’s faith.”
The Bible of her childhood infuses atheist Winterson’s writing, and this is no exception: phrases, ideas, and liturgical repetition and rhythm. Here, it’s most obvious in how the “emotional nomad” writes about love:
“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no.”
and
“No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”
From 1 Corinthians 13, v4-8 (NIV):
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
But I don’t think the Bible is right: love can fail:
“What then kills love? Only this: neglect.”
The other message, from way back in 1992, is that gender doesn’t matter; there is no question or hand-wringing; it’s not relevant to the story.
Image: “Love is love” in current parlance. (Source.)
Marriage
“Is happiness always a compromise?”
“Contentment… are you sure it’s not an absence of feeling?”
In my teens, I remember my father quoting (allegedly) Prince Philip: “Marriage is the highest form of prostitution”. There is truth in that, touched on repeatedly here. We all exchange things for sex and love: our motives are mixed and rarely pure. And the promises of marriage can be hard to keep.
“Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire.”
“Cheating is easy… To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first.”
The Translator, Translated
“Articulacy of the fingers… signing on the body body longing.”
“Your flesh is my flesh. You deciphered me and now I am plain to read.”
The narrator is a translator (there are many references to great literature, as usual for Winterson), but better in abstract than with those they love, let alone themself.
“Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights… In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille… I didn’t know that Louse would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.”
Bio-anatomical Prose Poetry
“I know the stigmata of presumption.”
There are no chapters, but two-thirds through, there are four short sections that defy easy description: semi-abstract musings on cells, skin, skeleton, and “special senses”, as the narrator agonises over anticipatory loss in a profound and sensual way.
“To remember you it’s my own body I touch.”
Ending
“Is this the proper ending? If not the proper then the inevitable?”
As I approached the end, I was nervous: I wasn’t sure what a happy ending would be, but knew I didn't want one. I need not have feared. It is everything and nothing - interpret as you like. I could quote the whole closing paragraph, without fear of spoilers.
In her brilliant autobiography, Why be Happy when you Could be Normal? (see my review HERE), Winterson categorises three types of ending: revenge, tragedy and forgiveness. Both books contain all three.
Other Quotes
Memory of Love
• “How easy is it to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it?”
• “Wisdom says forget. The body howls.”
• “I’ve tried to get you out of my head but I can’t seem to get you out of my flesh.”
• “I don’t want to be reminded of you, I want you.”
• “The power of memory is such that it can lift reality for a time.”
Relationships and Fallout
• “I used to think of marriage as a plate-glass window just begging for a brick.”
• “Odd that marriage, a public display and free to all, gives way to that most secret of liaisons, an adulterous affair.”
• “I had to keep my heart to myself in case I infected somebody” with “emotional clap”.
• “You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time.”
• “I had no dreams to possess you - but I wanted you to possess me.”
• “With old friends… you know one another as well as lovers do and you have less to pretend about” - so you’re more likely to be honest.
Dry Humour
• “The ultimate act of selfishness; a woman who put herself first.”
• “Her husband lies over her like a tarpaulin.”
• “The women wore their jewellery like medals… a palimpsest of love-affairs” on show at the opera.
• “I’d run my hands over her padded flesh with all the enthusiasm of a second-hand sofa dealer.”
• “They considered themselves to be Australian aristocracy, that is, they were descended from convicts.”
• “She had a steady hand but she like to spill. It made work for her daughter.”
Other
• “What you risk reveals what you value.”
• “People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.”
Winterson is queen of the extended metaphor. This is one of many (others include maps, animals, jigsaws):
“When she lifted the soup spoon to her lips how I longed to be that innocent piece of stainless steel… Let me be diced carrot, vermicelli, just so that you will take me in your mouth. I envied the French stick. I watched her break and butter each piece, soak it slowly in her bowl, let it float, grow heavy and fat, sink under the deep red weight and then be resurrected to the glorious pleasure of her teeth… I will taste you if only through your cooking.”
November 17, 2017
Jeanette Winterson impressed me last year when I read her magical tale of historical fiction, The Passion. Her poetic, interior style really resonated with me. Her work lays deep in the physical heart while also sparkling on an ethereal plane.
This book knocked me out. Her sheer artistry had me in admiration. A bit slack-jawed, actually. For example, the main character is not only nameless (I've seen that before) but is an 'every-person': Winterson doesn't tell us if they are male or female. Quite a feat for a book replete with sensual body worshipping between lovers. The effect is powerful - the reader can put themselves in the place of the narrator, or insert whatever gender they see, it being secondary to the train wreck of LOVE that takes centre stage.
Our main character has fallen in love with a woman, who is married to a man. The first part of this book is about their affair. Brace yourself. It is full of scalding truths about love, marriage and infidelity. There is much talk about love, and not all of it is corsets, sunsets and long stemmed roses.
Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire. You may as well take a pop-gun to a python.
The next part of the book is an anatomical ode to the body of the beloved. The skin, the bones, the cavities, the senses, they have affected the narrator in a manner just as profound as any other quality that inspires love. It's hard to know whether it's love that imprints on the body, or the body that sears its own tattoo on the soul of the person who loves them. Perhaps it is both.
It is poetic, lyrical, and philosophical, but there's just the right amount of story to carry you along to the end, which, incidentally, I thought was perfect.
Nail me to you. I will ride you like a nightmare. You are the winged horse Pegasus who would not be saddled.
This book knocked me out. Her sheer artistry had me in admiration. A bit slack-jawed, actually. For example, the main character is not only nameless (I've seen that before) but is an 'every-person': Winterson doesn't tell us if they are male or female. Quite a feat for a book replete with sensual body worshipping between lovers. The effect is powerful - the reader can put themselves in the place of the narrator, or insert whatever gender they see, it being secondary to the train wreck of LOVE that takes centre stage.
Our main character has fallen in love with a woman, who is married to a man. The first part of this book is about their affair. Brace yourself. It is full of scalding truths about love, marriage and infidelity. There is much talk about love, and not all of it is corsets, sunsets and long stemmed roses.
Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire. You may as well take a pop-gun to a python.
The next part of the book is an anatomical ode to the body of the beloved. The skin, the bones, the cavities, the senses, they have affected the narrator in a manner just as profound as any other quality that inspires love. It's hard to know whether it's love that imprints on the body, or the body that sears its own tattoo on the soul of the person who loves them. Perhaps it is both.
It is poetic, lyrical, and philosophical, but there's just the right amount of story to carry you along to the end, which, incidentally, I thought was perfect.
Nail me to you. I will ride you like a nightmare. You are the winged horse Pegasus who would not be saddled.
September 24, 2023
One day soon, a representative from the Bisexual Club of America will appear at my door, demanding forfeiture of my membership card. Yes, I once loved a lady with my whole heart. But recently, I’ve been seeking out bisexual-fronted reads, and I keep feeling repulsed by “sexy” descriptions of female genitalia.
Q: What’s your damage, Heather?
A: I don’t know. Self-hatred, perhaps. Internalized misogyny?
Whatever the case, reading this…
…only makes me think: Gross. Invest in a bottle of Lume or keep that rockpool to yourself.
So, you’ll understand my tenuous standing in the BCA.
Actually, though, I was often moved by this story, particularly by its narrator, who embodies my deepest fears and hopes about love, which I assume are basically the same as yours: love me, don’t abandon me, pay attention to me, don’t suffocate me, choose me above the rest, don’t exploit my brokenness, tell me what you need, don’t lie, match my efforts to make our life good, don’t die.
These facets have been poked at from time immemorial, but there’s a refreshing honesty here that feels rare and therefore special. Still, Winterson’s style isn’t always my jam. She supplements storytelling with stream-of-consciousness, imagist observations, poetry, and philosophical musings on such things as the laws of motion and the inevitable insufficiency of Teledildonics. I’m not always patient with these flourishes, especially when they interrupt the forward motion of a story.
I guess the best metaphor for this book is that it’s a... rockpool. There’s an inward, half-protected microcosm here, full of dazzling internal musings. But if you’re hoping for bombastic winds and the muscular, tidal rush of a plot thrust out to sea… you’re pretty well shit out of luck.
Gripes aside, I’d give a four-star rating for the following line alone, which is my favorite in the book, and perhaps of the year:
Book/Song Pairing: Sour Times (Portishead)
Q: What’s your damage, Heather?
A: I don’t know. Self-hatred, perhaps. Internalized misogyny?
Whatever the case, reading this…
She smells of the sea. She smells of rockpools when I was a child. She keeps a starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone (p. 73).
…only makes me think: Gross. Invest in a bottle of Lume or keep that rockpool to yourself.
So, you’ll understand my tenuous standing in the BCA.
Actually, though, I was often moved by this story, particularly by its narrator, who embodies my deepest fears and hopes about love, which I assume are basically the same as yours: love me, don’t abandon me, pay attention to me, don’t suffocate me, choose me above the rest, don’t exploit my brokenness, tell me what you need, don’t lie, match my efforts to make our life good, don’t die.
These facets have been poked at from time immemorial, but there’s a refreshing honesty here that feels rare and therefore special. Still, Winterson’s style isn’t always my jam. She supplements storytelling with stream-of-consciousness, imagist observations, poetry, and philosophical musings on such things as the laws of motion and the inevitable insufficiency of Teledildonics. I’m not always patient with these flourishes, especially when they interrupt the forward motion of a story.
I guess the best metaphor for this book is that it’s a... rockpool. There’s an inward, half-protected microcosm here, full of dazzling internal musings. But if you’re hoping for bombastic winds and the muscular, tidal rush of a plot thrust out to sea… you’re pretty well shit out of luck.
Gripes aside, I’d give a four-star rating for the following line alone, which is my favorite in the book, and perhaps of the year:
Scoop me in your hands for I am good soil. Eat of me and let me be sweet (p. 20).
Book/Song Pairing: Sour Times (Portishead)
May 16, 2023
Re-read May 2023:
It's somewhat comforting returning to my first Winterson novel for a reread six years later. This novel shaped me as a person, moved me in ways I didn't think possible, but mostly, I think Winterson helped to open my eyes to the beauty that is everywhere I tread.
Thank you for always being so unapologetically honest.
"Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid"
"Written on the body" is a captivating and beautifully written story of all the pleasure and in turn, the heartache, loving someone can cause. The way Winterson writes, is actually almost magical. Her words are almost like silk, but they are at the same time, so, so powerful.
I have to admit, this wouldn't have been a book I would have personally gone out and bought. My Mother insisted I read it, and I'm glad I did, as I had no idea what was coming. I didn't want this book to end.
"Misery is a vacuum. A space without air, a suffocated dead place, the abode of the miserable."
The writing had such a poetic feel to it, and this made it very moving for me. I felt very sad nearing the end of the book. I could almost feel the utter rawness that the narrator was going through. Regardless of whether the narrator is male or female, makes absolutely no difference to me. This book was beautiful, and made quite an impact on my poor, aching heart, which quite honestly, needs time to recover after this.
It's somewhat comforting returning to my first Winterson novel for a reread six years later. This novel shaped me as a person, moved me in ways I didn't think possible, but mostly, I think Winterson helped to open my eyes to the beauty that is everywhere I tread.
Thank you for always being so unapologetically honest.
"Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid"
"Written on the body" is a captivating and beautifully written story of all the pleasure and in turn, the heartache, loving someone can cause. The way Winterson writes, is actually almost magical. Her words are almost like silk, but they are at the same time, so, so powerful.
I have to admit, this wouldn't have been a book I would have personally gone out and bought. My Mother insisted I read it, and I'm glad I did, as I had no idea what was coming. I didn't want this book to end.
"Misery is a vacuum. A space without air, a suffocated dead place, the abode of the miserable."
The writing had such a poetic feel to it, and this made it very moving for me. I felt very sad nearing the end of the book. I could almost feel the utter rawness that the narrator was going through. Regardless of whether the narrator is male or female, makes absolutely no difference to me. This book was beautiful, and made quite an impact on my poor, aching heart, which quite honestly, needs time to recover after this.
February 19, 2012
Her artistry makes my mouth drop open. The most poetic, passionate, erotic book, it sits on my shelf with Duras' The Lover and Rikki Ducornet's The Word Desire and Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband. But it could also be shelved with Proust's Swann's Way for the sensual cling of memory and Chekhov's Lady with the Lapdog for its sadness. The poetry of its prose is incomparable. A meditation on sensual life and the meaning of love. As Carson said, 'Beauty is what makes sex, sex." A lover of undetermined gender describing a relationship with a married woman. And what a lover. What deft ability to capture our thoughts about love. Our, meaning the human being. For what is writing besides capturing thoughts that belong to all of us, so that we can recognize ourselves, undestand ourselves, and perhaps, each other. Every thoughtful book about love makes us better lovers, I think. It opens the gates of perception.
September 19, 2007
I was reading thru some of the reviews for this book. I'll just say that it's beautifully written. This book moved me. I cried with about twenty pages to go. My heart expanded and ached a little bit. I felt for the narrator (who we have to guess woman or man?) and for Louise. I love the narrator. This book is about love, relationships, loss, and is a bit hope filled at the end. The opening sentence: Why is the measure of love loss? and the book takes you from there. I finished it in a day. Not a lot of pages and would have finished it in just 3-4 hours had it not been for it's language lending itself to my own experiences in relationships and thoughts about love. One third of the way in I wanted to start over so I wouldn't be so near the end. At times I had to stop reading and go out and sit in the sun, put my feet in the grass, listen to the rustle of a tree in our backyard. I saw a hummingbird. A dragonfly. The reading of this book was competing with nature all day. Only when the day settled could I concentrate enough to finish it up. All in all, my life is richer for having read this book.
July 20, 2012
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Listen along (please): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7JPH-...
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When you fall in love with someone, I mean really fall, you become obsessed with the things that are written on the body. The scar on her elbow from when she tripped over the curb, the chip in his tooth from when he fell from his skateboard… that tiny birthmark behind her knee. Each mark tells a story. Knowing the story brings you closer. The burn mark on her hand from when she touched the hot stove… the freckles that dot the small of his back and look like Orion… that little heart on her hip that few people know about… the fillings in his mouth that you scan with your tongue… So many things that happened before you met are imprinted on her body to form a thousand memories. As you begin a life together, you become a part of those stories. … you know every mole, every line, every new wrinkle, every gray hair.
'Written on the Body' is a beautifully written and powerful story about all of the pleasure and pain of loving, the cruelty of not loving enough and everything in between. The narrator seems to be in love with being in love (“I’m addicted to the first 6 months"). You’re right there with her (him? It’s unclear) as she falls in:
“When she lifted the soup spoon to her lips how I longed to be that innocent piece of stainless steel. I would gladly have traded the blood in my body for half a pint of vegetable stock. Let me be diced carrot, vermicelli, just so that you will take me in your mouth."
The way Winterson writes is breathtaking. So often love stories are trite and sugary and predictable. But I didn’t see this one coming. It was magical. Pure poetry.
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Addendum: I meant to appeal to anyone who has read this book, please, let's discuss the ending! I wasn't sure what to make of it.
March 8, 2022
Remember that time you tried to abandon yourself, leave off a part of you behind? Behind what, though? The self as a continuity seems so illusory sometimes. It's one of the ways in which time tricks us. So we look into others to mark our own transcendency. The self is porous and the other is diaphanous. Written on the Body's self-proclaimed unreliable narrator falls in the kind of love that is an exile from the self, a love that's like a violet bruise.
The kind of love that you try to leave before it is even properly realized, before the mind can be purged of its memories and before the body can be erased of the contours it has molded itself to merge with. The kind of love that you try to negate by separation but only perpetuate. And since the lines that separate the self from the other are so stained, so blurred, you don't even know what you even tried to abandon. And our narrator knows this, is ever-aware and so can do nothing but react violently when that question resounds from all of the space around them: Why? Why? Why?
Written on the Body is Winterson's love letter to desire, the kind that slowly rises up from its slumber and screams while you submerge. But Winterson is not the type to submerge with grace, she is no Ophelia. Our narrator fights, kicks, screams, punches while drowning. Perfectly aware of the fact that resisting it is only making the experience more painful. They say you shouldn't swallow more water as your drown. But what if the water you happen to be drowning in is actually ambrosia?
The kind of love that you try to leave before it is even properly realized, before the mind can be purged of its memories and before the body can be erased of the contours it has molded itself to merge with. The kind of love that you try to negate by separation but only perpetuate. And since the lines that separate the self from the other are so stained, so blurred, you don't even know what you even tried to abandon. And our narrator knows this, is ever-aware and so can do nothing but react violently when that question resounds from all of the space around them: Why? Why? Why?
Written on the Body is Winterson's love letter to desire, the kind that slowly rises up from its slumber and screams while you submerge. But Winterson is not the type to submerge with grace, she is no Ophelia. Our narrator fights, kicks, screams, punches while drowning. Perfectly aware of the fact that resisting it is only making the experience more painful. They say you shouldn't swallow more water as your drown. But what if the water you happen to be drowning in is actually ambrosia?
September 20, 2018
Can love have texture? It is palpable to me, the feeling between us, I weight it in my hands the way I weight your head in my hands.
It gives me a loose-limbed confidence to know you'll be there. I'm expected.
There's continuum. There's freedom.
Written On The Body is more than a book, more than a story, more than anything even remotely quantifiable.
Written on the Body is an accurate study on the power of consequences, a retrospection on pure and unconditionate love, written with the passion of a thousand broken dreams.
The way it deals with sickness and pain and betrayal, moving from prose to authentic poetry in the same sentence, is what gives this book its aching and mangled edges. What places it within hand's reach.
I love the writing style and its tones. It was less like reading facts and more like actually feeling them properly on and under my very own skin.
The caresses, the tears, the smells, the wrong choices. Everything that could leave a tiny bittersweet scar in my reader's heart, it did.
It helps that the narrating voice has no name and no gender.
They're a character so deep and wounded by their present and past that it's way too easy to slide into their shoes and pretend you're experiencing the biggest and warmest kind of love of all times.
I'm in love with that ending. It's pure perfection.
Written on the body is a se red code only visible in certain lights.
First buddy-read of the year with my beautiful Swaye❤️
Thanks for recommending me such another beautiful gem and for sharing it with me.
I'll always trust your taste in books ;)
March 7, 2019
An interesting, sometimes funny, moving meditation on love and loss. The narrator, a translator of Russian fiction, is never named and his/her gender is deliberately ambiguous - he/she describes relationships with a number of lovers, mostly female but some male. The first half is fairly light in tone, as he/she describes the various affairs leading up to and including the dominant one which forms the main theme of the story, with a married woman called Louise, whose husband Elgin is a cancer specialist. Louise eventually decides to leave her husband.
The tone shifts abrubtly about halfway through, as Elgin tells the narrator that Louise is suffering from a form of leukemia that gives her an expected 100 months to live, and maybe less if she does not agree to the treatment he prescribes, so the narrator breaks off their relationship to allow the treatment, moving away to a cottage in rural Yorkshire. The second half begins rather oddly, as the narrator writes tributes to her which largely consist of a litany of possible symptoms. The narrator starts to suspect that Elgin is not telling all he knows, and eventually discovers that he has been deceiving them, setting off on a fruitless search for Louise. So if the first part is mostly about love, lust, obsession and betrayal, the second is more dominated by loss and morbidity, though never without the occasional touch of humour. The whole has a quiet power that gradually accumulates, particularly towards the end.
Thanks to the Reading the 20th Century group for choosing this one as a group read.
The tone shifts abrubtly about halfway through, as Elgin tells the narrator that Louise is suffering from a form of leukemia that gives her an expected 100 months to live, and maybe less if she does not agree to the treatment he prescribes, so the narrator breaks off their relationship to allow the treatment, moving away to a cottage in rural Yorkshire. The second half begins rather oddly, as the narrator writes tributes to her which largely consist of a litany of possible symptoms. The narrator starts to suspect that Elgin is not telling all he knows, and eventually discovers that he has been deceiving them, setting off on a fruitless search for Louise. So if the first part is mostly about love, lust, obsession and betrayal, the second is more dominated by loss and morbidity, though never without the occasional touch of humour. The whole has a quiet power that gradually accumulates, particularly towards the end.
Thanks to the Reading the 20th Century group for choosing this one as a group read.
November 26, 2020
Winterson goes deep. This is a story of a woman obsessed with love and intimacy, and yet so terrified of commitment that she finds herself in a pattern of falling for women who are married to men. She sees her pattern, knows she must fight against it for her health and happiness, and so commits to a sweet, steady woman who gets all the boxes checked in the healthy relationship department. Of course, this isn’t an authentic connection, but rather a rejection of herself, squelched because she believes she is bad. By the end, even though she can’t shed her compulsion, she takes a big risk to get things right. The emotions here felt alive and full of the desire to be authentic in love.
June 10, 2007
This was an amazing book. It starts out as a story of an affair, but the second half is more of a memory about or a lovestory to the lover's body. It's impossible to tell whether the storyteller is a man or woman, but this is so well written - sad, reflective, happy, joyful - it works through every emotion. I will have to buy it for myself.
A few quotes that were meaningful to me:
"I will taste you if only through your cooking."
"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation."
"What other places are there in the world than those discovered on a lover's body?"
A few quotes that were meaningful to me:
"I will taste you if only through your cooking."
"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation."
"What other places are there in the world than those discovered on a lover's body?"
June 26, 2008
I tried really hard to like Jeanette Winterson, because most of the women I respect think she is amazing. But I just think she is fumbling and kind of incompetent. And for me her charisma, great passion, and several devastating one-liners don't compensate for her imprecision, scattered incoherence, or the clamminess of her authorial 'I.'
Can't do it.
(Wait, don't leave! I like Anais Nin. Seriously...)
Can't do it.
(Wait, don't leave! I like Anais Nin. Seriously...)
February 27, 2022
I think that Jeanette Winterson is the author I've rarest the highest while reading her books. I've read a bunch yet only one three stars. Her stories is so emersive and the writing is such beautiful and intriguing to read. It's an author I want to revisit more and hopefully find more books by her to read for the first time
January 10, 2009
Gah -- I found this insufferably narcissistic and eye-rolling to read, devoid of any sympathetic characters save the zoo-lady Jacqueline, and incredibly unsatisfying in every way. The only reason I gave it two stars is because Winterson obviously has talent -- there were a few places where the imagery was striking enough to pierce my annoyance -- and clearly this is a matter of taste and preference. It's technically and emotionally proficient, but just doesn't resonate with me personally.
March 4, 2019
It is so terrifying, love
In less than 200 pages, Winterson has written something both light and profound, immensely intimate and yet somehow public, replete with humour and anguish, selfishness and care, and which moves from high comedy (wit, satire, absurdity) to something very moving. The writing is lush and sensuous, but always intelligent as connections are made via words and language to join ideas that don't traditionally belong together.
In lots of ways this is a story that has been done many, many times before: but it's a fine example of how a worn plot can be refreshed and renewed via writing and the unique perspective of a thoughtful, sensitive writer. Rest assured, there's no cheap melodrama here.
The big 'thing' about this book (it was first published in 1993 - is it still a 'thing' in 2019?) is that the narrator's name and gender is never told to us: we know they've been a Lothario, a Casanova, a Don Juan (funny how there are no equivalents for women) in their past with both male and female lovers; we know that they're a translator who works in the British Library (when it was still housed in the British Museum - burst of nostalgia!) - and we know that they're now deeply, obsessively in love with Louise. Do we need to know more? I didn't.
So this is a story about love, about how it encompasses both mind and body. But it's also a story about someone who knows the risks of love and doesn't want to go there... till they find themselves in too deep already. The first half is all about the narrator and their consciousness, and the movement of the novel is outwards from the narrator's interiority to that of Louise's physical interior with paeans to her bones, her muscles, her cells, her tissues. Only at the end of this journey can the narrator look back at their travels and realise that they have moved from a kind of selfishness masquerading as love to something that embraces the other, regardless of the effect on self. It's enthralling... and moving... and exquisitely done.
The book opens with a question and I think it ends with one, too, though the latter isn't articulated: how do we know we love? The narrator has found their answer.
July 9, 2023
کل داستان این کتاب میخواهد تعریف تنانهای از عشق بدهد و آن قسمتی از رابطهی عاشقانه را به تصویر بکشد که فارغ از جنسیت، بین بدنها اتفاق میافتد. البته مطمئن نیستم داستان دچار سانسور نشده باشد ولی پرداختن به موضوع خیانت، آن هم بدون قضاوتهای اخلاقی یا درگیر شدن با کلیشهها و تابوها شکل خاصی به روایت داده. آدم لازم نیست که نچنچکنان با خودش بگوید که بله خیانت بد است اما! بدون اما و اگر و بدون اینکه بدانید آدم خائنِ عاشق این قصه زن است یا مرد میتوانید بهش نزدیک شوید.
به گفته مترجم، نویسنده قسمتی از زندگیاش را -حالا نه صددرصد منطبق بر واقعیت- در این کتاب نوشته و قسمت بامزهاش هم این است که خانم جنت وینترسن با همسر آقای جولین بارنز وارد رابطه شده و شما در حین خواندن این کتاب همانطور که از توصیفات عاشقانه و جذاب نویسنده به وجد آمدهاید یاد اندوه پنهان جولین بارنز در کتاب طوطی فلوبر میافتید که حکایت از خیانتی فاششده داشت و به این شکل قصهها و واقعیتها در ه�� میآمیزند و آنچه در نهایت به اتفاق افتادنش باور دارید لذت متن است.
به گفته مترجم، نویسنده قسمتی از زندگیاش را -حالا نه صددرصد منطبق بر واقعیت- در این کتاب نوشته و قسمت بامزهاش هم این است که خانم جنت وینترسن با همسر آقای جولین بارنز وارد رابطه شده و شما در حین خواندن این کتاب همانطور که از توصیفات عاشقانه و جذاب نویسنده به وجد آمدهاید یاد اندوه پنهان جولین بارنز در کتاب طوطی فلوبر میافتید که حکایت از خیانتی فاششده داشت و به این شکل قصهها و واقعیتها در ه�� میآمیزند و آنچه در نهایت به اتفاق افتادنش باور دارید لذت متن است.
January 29, 2008
I don't believe I've ever read anyone who writes quite like Jeanette Winterson. She writes with a kind of sensuality that leaps over the conventional, making it arousing and painfully sad at the same time. It is incredible how she has managed to write a book in which you know not even the gender of the main character, but you know their emotions as intimately as if they were your own. After a single reading of this book, it became one of my favorites; not because the story is tragic (and it is), and not because the characters are vibrant, warm, and real (and they are), but because it is rare and wonderful to find writing that is this advanced, rich, gorgeous, and relatable.
October 22, 2020
Very intimate. The protagonist is sexless, a human in full capacity of the senses--& it is quite a feat to have a plot-less book revolving around sex and love. All of Winterson's novels are unique & original. This one is the least magical and least memorable--but still pretty darn remarkable.
July 8, 2024
some of the most beautifully written prose ever…
March 25, 2017
Cartea mea preferată, alături de „Pe aripile vântului”. Pur și simplu, fără cuvinte.
November 25, 2023
یه وقتایی یه جمله، یه اسم یا حتی یه متن کوتاه باعث میشه با خودت بگی ممکن کتاب جالبی باشه پس بزار بخونمش، برای این کتاب جمله معروف «چرا معیار اندازهگیری عشق فقدان است؟» آغاز کننده آشنایی من با راوی بینام و نشان کتاب شد. در طی داستان حسهای مختلفی رو نسبت به راوی داشتم خشم، دلسوزی و شاید بعضا درکش هم میکردم. درسته کتاب از روایت کردن خطی اتفاقات استفاده نکرده. درسته نمیدونیم از کجای داستان شروع میکنه و قراره ما رو کجای داستان رها کنه، اما به شکل عجیبی خسته کننده نیست نمیپرسی الان چی شد؟ کجا رفت؟ تو کدوم زمانیم؟ چرا پایانش بازه و بیسرانجام تموم شد. انگار یه سیر ملای��ی داره که ازاردهنده نیست و ناخوداگاهت داره درک میکنه، قطعا اگر توصیفات جذاب کتاب نبود، در دسته کتابهای معمولی میزاشتمش و تمام. روند داستان برای من از سوال «مگه یه آدم انقدر میتونه عوضی باشه؟» شروع شد و با سوال «مگه یه آدم چقدر میتونه عاشق باشه» به پایان رسید. جنت عزیز حس میکنم برای من اولین نویسندهای بودی که تونستی از دنیای فیزیک و زیستشناسی، به شکل زیبایی مفهوم عشق رو در ذهن خواننده به تصویر بکشی. و میتونم به قطع بگم این کتاب میتونه کتابی باشه که چندین بار خوندش و خسته نشد.
پ.ن: از دید خودم پایان خوبی رو براش تصور کردم و بهم ارامش داد :)
بالاخره ��قتی از فقدان حرف میزنیم باید آخر داستان با فقدان تموم شه دیگه نه؟!
پایان: چهارم آذرماه سال ۱۴۰۱
پ.ن: از دید خودم پایان خوبی رو براش تصور کردم و بهم ارامش داد :)
بالاخره ��قتی از فقدان حرف میزنیم باید آخر داستان با فقدان تموم شه دیگه نه؟!
پایان: چهارم آذرماه سال ۱۴۰۱
August 22, 2023
i wish i could underline every single sentence in this
April 26, 2024
شاید اگه کتاب رو خیلی قبل تر پیش میخوندم، باهاش زار زار گریه میکردم. اما همین الان هم که حال قبلم رو ندارم، با خوندنش دگرگون شدم.
جنسیتِ راویِ داستان مشخص نیست اما در هر صورت چیزی که مشخصه اینه که بایسکشواله! :))
تا اواسط کتاب، بنظر میاد داستان پیچیدگیِ خاصی نداره و صرفا یه روایتِ عاشقانه ی معمولی و آرومه اما هرچی جلوتر میره، با ذهن خواننده بیشتر بازی میشه و سوال های بیشتری بوجود میاد.
همین الان کتاب رو تموم کردم اما فکر نمیکنم فعلا بتونم از فکرش بیام بیرون!
جنسیتِ راویِ داستان مشخص نیست اما در هر صورت چیزی که مشخصه اینه که بایسکشواله! :))
تا اواسط کتاب، بنظر میاد داستان پیچیدگیِ خاصی نداره و صرفا یه روایتِ عاشقانه ی معمولی و آرومه اما هرچی جلوتر میره، با ذهن خواننده بیشتر بازی میشه و سوال های بیشتری بوجود میاد.
همین الان کتاب رو تموم کردم اما فکر نمیکنم فعلا بتونم از فکرش بیام بیرون!
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