Rating: 
Summary: CyberCentury Literature
Review: "The Powerbook" is my first Jeanette Winterson book; which makes me unqualified to comment on her stylistic transformation from her 1985 debut, "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit", to this, being her seventh and latest novel.
As a writer, I think her powers center around her descriptive abilities, both of fantastic and adventurous creation and the strength of this book, the Paris and Capri chapters; as well Spitalfields, and the George Mallory and Francesca & Paolo stories. Here, the reader experiences through the bodily senses the joys of these wonderous locales.
Her writing is also intimate, tender, and personal. I don't know if these are common adjectives which male book reviewers & literary critics use to disparage female writers they don't particularly care for, but Winterson combines her up-close emational style with an array of big, intellectual ideas.
The result: An insightful, original, sometimes funny and ironic piece of writing, but lacking the heavy satire and cramped, bleak nihilism that many women readers are not enamored by.
Conclusion: A book that could very easily make it to Oprah's Book Club but would prove anyone wrong who used that as a badge to discredit its marvelous contents.
Rating: 
Summary: For those who seek complex plots
Review: An email writer will compose any story line - provided the person is prepared to enter the story and be changed. That's the outline for the novel Powerbook, but the descriptions are far more surreal and fluid than the premise seems, and enthusiasts of literary works who seek complex plots with metaphor and innuendo will find Powerbook satisfyingly mysterious.
Rating:
Summary: winterson's witty world
Review: as a huge winterson fan, i devoured 'the powerbook' just as i devoured all of her other works. there is much to appreciate in this book (i refrain from calling it a novel, for reasons i'll give below), there are sentences that are just so RIGHT and intense that you wonder why you hadn't written them or at least thought them yourself. the only problem i had with this book is that it tries to mask itself as a novel. it seemed to me it was more of a series of meditations on timelessness and love (winterson's trademarks) but now advanced into the 21st century world ruled by the internet. the various sections of the book do not work as a cohesive whole, which they must in order for alix (the narrator) to allow the reader to fully understand her illusive method of love-letter-writing. still, the language and situations within the book are priceless and typical winterson -- witty, filled with modes of collective unconscious thought. a jewel of a book/collection which perhaps (?) should have been marketed as such instead of a novel.
Rating:
Summary: The risks of love
Review: I adore Winterson's style, which always is magical, moving, and marvelous. Here, in "The PowerBook", she has created a book that contains a doomed love affair, potent observations about time and space, autobiographical snapshots, and vivid imagery. It's as if the narrator {sometimes called Ali, and later referred to as Orlando (a reference to Virginia Woolf)} and the lover create a world via the internet, where they change gender and geographies and centuries with ease. It reminded me of Woolf's "Orlando", as well as "Prozac Highway" by Persimmon Blackbridge, which includes a wonderful internet romance. "The PowerBook" is delightfully innovative in incorporating internet imagery into the book, and the love affair is quite beautifully written. I don't think the book ended well, especially in the last chapter section, where it seems to meander and then snaps back to a quick end. This seemed to dilute the novel, and left me a bit bewildered. I did love the novel overall, though. Winterson's use of language is always a treat.
Rating:
Summary: At your own risk!
Review: I have always admired Jeanette Winterson. The Passion is one of my favorite novels. I had been anticipating the release of this new novel, for it focuses on cyberspace. Ali, an e-mail writer, has prepared a game for you. You can enter the realm of virtual reality and go everywhere you want and do anything you want to do. However, you also risk discovering things about yourself that you may not have wanted. Like all Winterson's previous novels, it has a surreal approach to romance. Also, there is the ambiguity of sexual preference and/or identity. Still, the risk is worth taking. This is a fabulous novel. The magical realism is there! Winterson has never let me down! Read it, at your own risk!
Rating:
Summary: warning: this story might change you....
Review: i knew when i got this book, i was in for something special. it's about the internet, but the internet only serves as winterson's canvas to alter reality, even create new ones. her writing is dreamy, like an elixir spinning in your bloodstream. time and distance are futile boundaries conquered by her pen. characters change periods, countries, and genders, making you wonder if your so-called reality is safe. several different tales run through the book, never connecting, but all are about love. jeannette writes about love as if it were natural as breathing. ali doesn't just write stories, s/he is a story, this book will be new everytime you read it. you will never read anything more creative or erotic
Rating: 
Summary: Style Over Substance and Not Even Much Style
Review: I loved Jeanette Winterson's earlier novels, SEXING THE CHERRY and THE PASSION, so I really expected to love THE POWERBOOK as well. Boy, was I disappointed. THE POWERBOOK is nothing at all like Winterson's fantastic and imaginative earlier works and I can't really say she's changed course for the better. She hasn't. There isn't much plot in THE POWERBOOK and what there is centers around a non-specific gender persona named Ali/x who, for one night in cyberspace, will make your dreams come true by reinventing her/himself into anything and everything you could ever want. It is only when Ali/x her/himself falls in love that trouble begins. Winterson is an enormously talented writer; her earlier books are certainly testimony to that fact. But in THE POWERBOOK, I have to agree with the reviewer who said that Winterson was indulging in "fake depth." The story is shallow, the emotions don't ring true, the characters are simply unbelievable and the prose is trite and hackneyed. The best thing about THE POWERBOOK are Winterson's descriptive passages of London and Paris and Capri, especially Capri. I really felt I was there; Winterson described Capri and she did catch all of its magic and beauty in THE POWERBOOK. I don't know if Winterson expected us to empathize with or feel sympathy for the characters in THE POWERBOOK, but I simply couldn't do either. I really hated them. They were the epitome of shallow and boring. The characters in THE GREAT GATSBY were shallow, and sometimes boring, as well, but they did have substance, something that rescued them. Winterson's characters have no more substance than the first cliche that might roll off the tongue. I'm not narrow minded and I sometimes like erratic books, but only those with some substance, some depth, something of interest. THE POWERBOOK had none of the above. And, if all of this isn't bad enough, does ever book have to throw in a recipe to two simply to make it trendy? I, for one, am getting sick of "food related" novels just because LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE revolved so brilliantly around a recipe book. Being trendy doesn't make something good and it certainly doesn't add emotional depth or richness. THE POWERBOOK is style over substance and really, there isn't much style. If you like shallow book about shallow characters, then THE POWERBOOK was tailor made for you. Really, though, THE POWERBOOK is Winterson at her very worst. If you want a glimpse of how good and how original this author can be, read SEXING THE CHERRY or THE PASSION instead. Recommended only to die hard Winterson fans who will love anything she writes, be it good, bad or something in between.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, but a bit too abstract
Review: I loved the writing, loved the romance, loved the passion, but couldn't quite deal with the abstraction of it all.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't get there
Review: I was never quite sure what the point of this book was the whole time I was reading it. I recognized that the title and several chapter heads referred to Macintosh computers, but there really was no computer in the book. Instead, there was a series of loosely joined stories, some based on legends from the past, some bordering on fairy tales, and others slices of present-day life. The center of the story is a rather mundane love affair, except this one is between two women. They desperately love each other, want to be together, can't be together, then maybe... But the meat of the book is lost in a lot of filler that, while sometimes engaging, ultimately never gets into that bigger something it's trying so hard to be.
Rating:
Summary: Scheherazade for the 21st Century
Review: If you're someone who loves the power of words, who loves lush, poetic prose and the images it can conjure, the magic it can work, then you will probably love Jeanette Winterson's beautiful novel, "The Powerbook." "The Powerbook" explores Winterson's recurring themes of time, love and gender identificantion (or the lack of it) through the story of Ali/Alix, a woman living in cyberworld and reinventing herself at another's command. But reinventing yourself doesn't come without a price as Ali/Alix soon finds out. Will she pay it? And if she does, will it be worth the price? For me, "The Powerbook" is Jeanette Winterson at her very best. Everything that was so wonderful in her previous novels comes together in this one. She tells stories, she writes the most lyrically divine prose, she uses linear time and circular time, she anchors herself in reality while letting herself soar on flights of fancy. "The Powerbook" is art for the sake of art. Although some would argue that "art for the sake of art," especially in the literary realm, is nothing but conceit, Winterson herself, has stated differently and I agree with her. Art, she said, is our opportunity to get things right. To tell the truth. To find the ultimate reality. And she's right. Art doesn't deceive us, except on very rare occasions, and when those rare occasions do occur, we're angry with the artist. I know that many people will read this book and wail, "But that's not real life!" Those who do should stop and reread the book once again. And even again and again if need be. It's life that tells us lies, either deliberately or by omission, life that deceives, life that denies us the rich world of fantasy and imagination and creative invention...the world that Winterson seeks and finds in her own strikingly original work. In "The Powerbook," Winterson allows her narrator to become a part of his/her own stories, to become a character in them, to reinvent himself/herself to suit the needs of the receiver. While this book is not conventionally plotted, there are stories in "The Powerbook," and they are wonderful stories indeed. One of the best is a meandering, poetic discourse on the meaning of life and love and death. "I was happy with the lightness of being in a foreign city," Winterson writes, evoking Milan Kundera's wonderful "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "and the relief from identity that it brings." And later, "There was such lightness in me that I had to be tied to the pommel of the saddle..." "The Powerbook" is set in London and Paris and on the beautiful island of Capri as well as in the world of cyberspace, employing both the world of reality and the world of fantasy in the very best mix possible. The lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur in this book, but they blur in real life as well. Who can say exactly how much of an experience is "real" and exactly how much exists in the imagination? And, as she does in every book, Winterson mesmerizes us with her images of time, or the lack of time. She explores linear time, circular time, the absence of time, the impermeability of time, the transmutation of time, time without end and on and on and on. It's fascinating, but only if you want to make the effort. Winterson is so often accused of being possesed of literary conceit and disdain for her readers. I think this is grossly unfair criticism. Her books can be difficult and they do demand the reader's attention; one cannot flip through a Jeanette Winterson book, speed-reading on a beach under the summer sun. However, if Winterson demands attention and time and effort from her readers she also gives. I judge a book's worth, in part, by what I take with me after reading it, what becomes lasting, what changes me. With Winterson's books I am always a different person when I finish than when I began...I'm richer, smarter, more enlightened. To me, that's high praise for an author rather than criticism. In Winterson's wonderful book, "The Passion," she writes, "I'm telling you stories. Believe me." It is the wise reader who does believe Winterson and the rewarded one who listens to her stories...again and again and again. Jeanette Winterson really is a writer with something important to say.
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