Rating: 
Summary: A few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious exces
Review: "Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle, it did'nt matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that." I have read this book four times to date, as well as watched the TV serial on UK BBC TV and have recently purchased the video. Why? Because Jess lived in a childhood world not dissimilar to my own; it's the 1960s, she is a special child brought into a sinning world that she is going to change by becoming a missionary. That's her mother's view anyway.
Then in the 70s, against the slowly changing background of a decaying mill town in the NorthWest of England, she starts to question her pre-ordained life, and falls in love.
The traumatic discovery of her affair and the resolve Jess encounters will ring true to anybody brought up in a closed or religious commmunity, where you suddenly realise you don't want what has already been mapped out for you.
"There are different sorts of treachery, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it."
The characters in Jess's life leap out of the pages, my particular favourites are her terrifying mother, the sinister church pastor, and Elsie, Jess's childhood friend.
The structure of the book, mixing the account of Jess's life with moments of fantasy add a dreamlike and often moving quality, the two mediums seem entirely separated until you turn the next page and find the answer.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and can only be thankful that Jeanette Winterson had the courage and determination to bring this corner of industrial England and the intimate details of this developing child's life into print.
It's a love story too.
Rating:
Summary: Fruitbasket Upset
Review: "People like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so that they know what to believe and what not to believe. This is very curious." (p. 93) This "autobiographical" novel challenges us with the nature of reality. Do we take seriously the naively precocious narration of young Jeanette, brought up in a social "reality" most readers would find suspect? Whose eyes tell us the truth? Even when the narrative breaks into the mythological, truth dances tantalizingly out of the shadows, but still evades, no matter how we try to seduce it. If nothing else (and it is =MUCH= else), we encounter our own challenge of existing within social constraints that seemingly resist our attempts to alter them. In the young Jeanette we reflect on the naivete of one who does not recognize any other way to be, who only eats oranges, who cannot really imagine living outside the lines. Jeanette grows up, finds love and discovers that her love receives no approbation from her family or community. Her love mobilizes all the "Holy" to try to fit her back into their mold for her life. As she matures, the story becomes less certain, more questioning of itself. Increasingly, we encounter interludes of mythological material, which move the story along, exposing even a deeper truth. And perhaps that upsets the fruitbasket entirely. Jeanette's mother is virtually unbelievable. I would consider her two-dimensional, except I've met her. Well, not that same woman, but her spiritual twin. And in real life, she was two-dimensional, at best. Truth, so cleaned & dried & pressed becomes surreal, and what little bit of "reality" remains maps into a mere two dimensions. Flattens. And Jeanette's young life is so flattened, that only the trauma of forbidden love can give her depth. But even that cannot be told in mere words, it must be shown in yet another layer of story, lest truth escape disguising itself as language. A magnificent book, and a fun read. Fast. Best read twice, in rapid succession.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as Smart As She Thinks She Is
Review: An impressive piece of work but irritating and ultimately unsatisfying. The structure is confusing - not really innovative, as many seem to think, just quirky - the inserted fables little more than pretentious nonsense. The characters, especially the mother, are caricatures, cartoon figures who only serve as opportunities for the author to demonstrate her superiority. Worst of all, Jeanette, both as a character and as a narrator, has no empathy for others in her life. She betrays not the slightest sympathy for anyone who behaves differently than she wants them to. In some circles, this type of behavior is known as "sociopathology". As a reader, this leaves one with no sympathetic or full-blooded chareacters, no social context, a plot that is as ordinary as they come, and a lot of fancy writing. I know this is a minority opinion, but I must be honest: I found this book annoying and pretentious.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond Fruit Diversity
Review: How do we access rapture? What comprises a revelation? Take every book you've ever read advertised as a 'coming of age story' or as a 'tale of sexual awakening' and recycle 'em. ....This, Winterson's first book, is a triumph in the memoir genre specifically because it refuses to be a memoir. Rather than rehash and rephrase the standard first-person epiphany, Winterson dwells in the details of exchange, and the vagaries of revelation, constantly twisting your narrative imagination with her delicate ironies and analogies. Of particular interest is her descriptions of Pentecostal culture, and the consequences of didactic belief.
Rating:
Summary: Moldy oranges are not the only smell that stink around here
Review: I just finished this book, and although it was a rather solid start for Winterson, I would recommend that you skip her early stuff and go straight to her masterpeice Written on the Body. I found Oranges to be rather dry and not completely formulated. However if you do find yourself with it in your hand, I do highly recommend page 170.
Rating: 
Summary: Promising first novel
Review: I liked this book a lot, too, but it does suffer from what might be identified as a first novel's imperfections - especially the metaphorical fables plunked into the middle of the narrative without any connecting language. The rest of the novel so successfully carries us along in the flow of Jeanette's life that the fables, meaningful or not, are interruptions. This quibble aside, OANTOF is a charming melange of working class comedy, evangelical exposé, and coming of age story. It's not surprising that sexuality, that most fundamental aspect of the human condition, is what wakes Jeanette to her self and leads to the break with her church, yet in her innocence she isn't even aware of the consequences until they are spelled out for her. That is wonderfully well conveyed and believable. Winterson wins my respect for her generous spirit: she treats no character meanly or vengefully, even the most repressive ones. If anything, that's what proves the narrator has risen above the petty proscriptions among which she was raised.
Rating:
Summary: Good concept, witty, but tries too hard
Review: I read this book when I was first coming out as a lesbian. The humor drew me in from the first page, where the main character finds hilariously understated ways of describing her mother's black-and-white view of the world. The caricatured characters as viewed through the discerning and somewhat opinionated eyes of a child only add to the subtle (and not-so-subtle) humor, even when the book is exploring serious issues. If the book had continued like this, it would have been a brilliant, quirky coming-of-age/coming-out story. In some ways, it still is. But this book suffers too greatly from a style that has become trendy since the nineties -- a sort of forced, breezy detachment that tries too hard to convey *something*, although precisely what that is is not clear. It seems to happen more when the author strays into the fairy tale that is clumsily interwoven with the story, or when she muses on the nature of reality. Musings that are presumably supposed to sound profound, instead sound hollow, empty, and slightly flippant. Maybe this author is ahead of her time, given that the book was written in 1985. I see more of this style in recent books than I see in books from the eighties. This style conveys an image of a shallow main character who walks fast through life so she doesn't have to look too hard at it, preferring clever-sounding, pretty words instead of the truth, or indeed even the idea that reality exists at all. While her upbringing as depicted in the book -- growing up a lesbian in a dysfunctional Evangelical Christian household -- could lead a person to a view of the world like that, it's hard to tell whether this is the author's intent in the character, a pretentious affectation, or the actual view the author (and not just in her character's persona) is writing from. Whatever it is, it grated on my nerves after awhile, and after my first reading I skimmed these sections in order to avoid a mounting irritation with the narrator. I have heard this book described as non-linear, and therefore confusing. The non-linearity (if it can even be called that) of the book was not a problem, but it was not carried off well. It read like a linear thinker trying too hard to fit a book into their own conception of non-linearity, influenced by postmodern thinking. Stories are inserted here and there, and attempts at reflection appear to depend more at times on whether words fit together prettily than whether they actually reflect anything. If a portrayal of emptiness is what this author is going for, she's succeeded. I like the concept of the book, and many of the wry observations, which is perhaps why this is the only story in which I strongly prefer the movie to the book. The movie manages to capture the plot and the wit while shedding a lot of the excess verbal meanderings that weakened the book.
Rating:
Summary: Good concept, witty, but tries too hard
Review: I read this book when I was first coming out as a lesbian. The humor drew me in from the first page, where the main character finds hilariously understated ways of describing her mother's black-and-white view of the world. The caricatured characters as viewed through the discerning and somewhat opinionated eyes of a child only add to the subtle (and not-so-subtle) humor, even when the book is exploring serious issues. If the book had continued like this, it would have been a brilliant, quirky coming-of-age/coming-out story. In some ways, it still is. But this book suffers too greatly from a style that has become trendy since the nineties -- a sort of forced, breezy detachment that tries too hard to convey *something*, although precisely what that is is not clear. It seems to happen more when the author strays into the fairy tale that is clumsily interwoven with the story, or when she muses on the nature of reality. Musings that are presumably supposed to sound profound, instead sound hollow, empty, and slightly flippant. Maybe this author is ahead of her time, given that the book was written in 1985. I see more of this style in recent books than I see in books from the eighties. This style conveys an image of a shallow main character who walks fast through life so she doesn't have to look too hard at it, preferring clever-sounding, pretty words instead of the truth, or indeed even the idea that reality exists at all. While her upbringing as depicted in the book -- growing up a lesbian in a dysfunctional Evangelical Christian household -- could lead a person to a view of the world like that, it's hard to tell whether this is the author's intent in the character, a pretentious affectation, or the actual view the author (and not just in her character's persona) is writing from. Whatever it is, it grated on my nerves after awhile, and after my first reading I skimmed these sections in order to avoid a mounting irritation with the narrator. I have heard this book described as non-linear, and therefore confusing. The non-linearity (if it can even be called that) of the book was not a problem, but it was not carried off well. It read like a linear thinker trying too hard to fit a book into their own conception of non-linearity, influenced by postmodern thinking. Stories are inserted here and there, and attempts at reflection appear to depend more at times on whether words fit together prettily than whether they actually reflect anything. If a portrayal of emptiness is what this author is going for, she's succeeded. I like the concept of the book, and many of the wry observations, which is perhaps why this is the only story in which I strongly prefer the movie to the book. The movie manages to capture the plot and the wit while shedding a lot of the excess verbal meanderings that weakened the book.
Rating:
Summary: Understated, brilliant writing
Review: I was charmed by this book. Ms. Winterson has written a story that is often tender, funny, wry and winsome. I am looking forward to reading more of her work and am absolutely thrilled to see that Amazon carries a videotape of the film version of this book that has received the same excellent reviews as the novel. Thank you, Ms. Winterson, for this lovely story.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Place to Start
Review: I've read many of Winterson's works and am quickly making my way through them. This was the first book of hers that I read and now, I am absolutely hooked. This semi-autobiographical novel gives readers a peak into her abilities to develop characters and plot. It's a good read that you'll find hard to put down. However, this is just the beginning. This book, in my opinion, is a good place to start with her novels. Though not nearly as profound and poetic as most of her other works, this book is without a doubt worth your time!
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