Rating: 
Summary: Fake Depth
Review: In this tale youcan be have two things happen during the course. One is you can hate it, and two you can love it. I am not sure if there is a much of in-between in this novel. The only reason i say this is because if you look at its content, a very touchy subject of 2 women loving and having a sexual relationship, then you can either love or despise this. <u>In all actuality if you don't like it, it is because one you are narrow minded or two because you can't follow the erratic way in which the story is told.</u> I finished this book in three hours...and i loved every damn word of it. But I guess it all depends on who you are. ;0 I think that this book should be read by anyone that can sympathize with bisexuals or those whom are polyamourus.
Rating: 
Summary: Power For THe Masses
Review: In this tale youcan be have two things happen during the course. One is you can hate it, and two you can love it. I am not sure if there is a much of in-between in this novel. The only reason i say this is because if you look at its content, a very touchy subject of 2 women loving and having a sexual relationship, then you can either love or despise this. In all actuality if you don't like it, it is because one you are narrow minded or two because you can't follow the erratic way in which the story is told. I finished this book in three hours...and i loved every damn word of it. But I guess it all depends on who you are. ;0 I think that this book should be read by anyone that can sympathize with bisexuals or those whom are polyamourus.
Rating: 
Summary: You must master your fear. Or your fear will master you.
Review: Jeanette Winterson is a serious author. She has won awards and appears in the Guardian quite frequently. "If Neal Stephenson can write engagingly about technology", she must have thought, "then so can I - after all, I'm a serious author, and I appear in the Guardian quite frequently." Thus, 'The.Powerbook', a novel created entirely to ride the wave of the dot.com boom of a few months ago, and to introduce Winterson to a younger generation (note to self - include the words 'downloading' and 'hard drive'). Wrap it up in a cover that looks a bit like those adverts with Sophie Dahl, include a reference to Apple's media toy, and voila, healthy sales. In ten years time, this book will be forgotten, a relic, moreso than it is now. But what's it like, though? As with all Winterson novels since 'Oranges', it's essentially a series of pithy one-liners strung together ('On the day I was born I became the visible corner of a folded map', 'Like it or not, you are alone in the forest') that, like a lot of debut novels, coalesces into a portrait of Winterson as she would like to be - Alix, a recontextualising e-writer. There are some clever ideas - bits of other books are rewritten, as if sampled, although why this is any cleverer than traditional parodies, I don't know - but it's essentially a plotless series of superficially-deep epigrams for 230 pages. Elsewhere on this page a review asserts that you can meditate for days over lines such as 'The dreams of the dying cannot be irrigated' and 'To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself I stay on the run.' Presumably, he or she is a satirist.
Rating:
Summary: There is no love that does not pierce the hands and the feet
Review: Jeanette Winterson's The Powerbook manages to accomplish in only 289 pages what other books cannot accomplish in 1000...suggesting that all time is one. Winterson has made it perfectly clear elsewhere ("Art Objects: Essays on Ecstacy and Effrontery") that "all art belongs to a single period". Winterson interweaves myth, fact, history, drama, comedy, charm, wit, all in a mesmerizing voice that carries itself in a blend of rhythm, logic, revelation, beauty. What is particularly fascinating about this novel is that there is no plot, but a series of themes that run through the fragmented novel. It is as though she has grabbed a whole of beauty, smashed it, and reassembled it. A few readings show that the otherwise unrelated characters do have some dependancy on each other, to continue the story where their mentioning ends, to reveal nuances that their actions would otherwise obscure. This book moves through several characters, through the eyes of women and men, and we find out what it is like to feel and act anf love like a man and as a woman. Francesca loves Paolo and we fall in love with him too (the haunting line "Paolo il bello" resonates) but through the story of Guinevere and Lancelot it is through Lancelot's eyes that we are, and the object of our affection is Guinevere. This is a fully realised work, and if we compare Oranges and this we see vast differences...it makes me wonder what novels Jeanette Winterson will be composing for the next 30 to 40 years of her life. I, for one, will read them all upon moment of publication.
Rating:
Summary: I never had erotic thoughts about tulips before this book...
Review: Ms. Winterson does it again.
A novel for the information age, just when we all thought computers would spell the death of literature! This is a book to read..no savor...several times. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Winterson at her best
Review: No one can take a metaphor and run with it like Winterson. Flawless, lyrical prose, carried off with the virtuosity of a now fully mature talent. Made me wish I were younger and more romantic, to be wholly swept away by the novel's love-smitten heroine. But then no one in Winterson's generation seems wiser in her observations on love, death, life, and work. A book so well written as to be almost effortless reading. The previous reviewer states the case in more detail, and quite well.
Rating: 
Summary: Gemful, but not to Winterson's usual abundance.
Review: Ordinarily I would unequivically gush about anything Winterson. The premise is strong, the prose is moving, and the plot is convoluted in a distinctly Winterson manner. Ali, an on-line wordsmith, has an offer for you. "Freedom for one night" in the form of any story - you can be written into your own novella. Although I was engaged by the rapid succession of this nouveaux style story poem I couldn't help being a bit lost in all the jolting transitions. Winterson drops some real gems but this book left me exhausted and a little more bewildered than usual. +: poetry, immagination, lots of movement
-: easy to be left behind, disjointed and lacking a strong common thread.
Rating:
Summary: Gemful, but not to Winterson's usual abundance.
Review: Ordinarily I would unequivically gush about anything Winterson. The premise is strong, the prose is moving, and the plot is convoluted in a distinctly Winterson manner. Ali, an on-line wordsmith, has an offer for you. "Freedom for one night" in the form of any story - you can be written into your own novella. Although I was engaged by the rapid succession of this nouveaux style story poem I couldn't help being a bit lost in all the jolting transitions. Winterson drops some real gems but this book left me exhausted and a little more bewildered than usual. +: poetry, immagination, lots of movement
-: easy to be left behind, disjointed and lacking a strong common thread.
Rating:
Summary: Type 11 Error
Review: Sadly, I found this book to be mostly tedious, with irritating "literary" tendencies and repetition. Using the PowerBook theme, naming the chapters after recognizable phrases from the Macintosh user interface, is cute, but seems mostly to be a gimmick.
He found the shifting perspectives to be an aggravation, especially when executed for the apparent purpose of re-exploring the same events. As he got off the plane, he was not terribly disappointed to find that he had left the book in the seat pocket, despite the occasionally witty or thought-provoking ideas that could be found scattered throughout the text.
Rating:
Summary: Overdone Yet Not Enough Tension
Review: The author recently came to speak at Macalester College in the Twin Cities. She blasted creative writing. She denies that she formulates her text, her writing, but it is all too formulaic. Broken narrative, multiple points of view, jumping seemingly but somewhat obviously back and forth in time . . . I loved Winterson at 21, but now that I'm reaching my 30's, she seems tired. Give me classical literature again, with more developed and more interesting characters. Characters are born of history and have to have that. Both the stranger and the narrator, Alix, are absolutely annoying. They are carelessly written, especially the married stranger. Too typical. High strung, hedonistic, married. Too easy to read. Alix is more interesting. More engaging. Would like to see the author stretch beyond herself. would like to see the author--who can be deadbolt stunning with her coarse silencing language--to push more, even her own boundaries. As a reader, I want more, and have no patience for a shoddy job at fully unrealized broken narrative. Too neatly done. Reminds me of THE ENGLISH PATIENT.
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