Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, lovely
Review: The gender of the narrator is not hidden, it is disregarded, unimportant. It is true that it begins more bravely than it ends and that the chapters devoted to the body, while beautifully written, are destracting to the reader intent on a plot. But on the whole, like Nabokov's "Lolita," it is a book best loved for it's strengths, for a moments, it is some of the loveliest, bravest prose I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: What's a Mickey Mouse One-piece?
Review: I have hurtled through most of Jeanette Winterson's books in the last week and, while admiring the style and enjoying the content, have not been as personally affected as I was by "Written on the Body". Sensually and emotionally. I found echoes of personal experiences, of love and sex, of death and parting. But these echoes seemed sharper than the my own dull pain or pleasure. I prefer my fact to her fiction, but when I'm worried that I'll lose the intensity of my memories, I can open this book and use it to re-kindle fading feelings. My one question: am I so stupid or so singly focused that I missed the ambiguity in the gender of the narrator? (genuine question that ran through my mind reading some of the other reviews) I'm not sure what a Mickey Mouse One-piece is, but I can't see a man in it. Oh and it's nice to have an ending which made me cry.
Rating:
Summary: Sexy and mysterious, let your imagination take you.
Review: I loved this book. You don't know the sex of the author so it keeps you guessing. A great book to read for the gay community.
Rating:
Summary: Smooth, risky, poetic storytelling.
Review: I was introduced to Ms. Winterson through this title, and found the book intriguing due to her style and language risks. Shifts in tense and voice are often used as a disguise; this results in a Woolf-like stream of consciousness effect that is startlingly moving. Read it again!
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing
Review: I find the polarity of the reviews on this sight intriguing; I would like to add a word or two for some kind of middle ground, leaning toward the positive. While, no, this is not the most incredibly amazing book I EVER read, it is one of the most interesting things I've read published after, oh, I don't know, 1970? Winterson takes chances in this book, something which too few authors do these days; yes, this novel resorts to a gimmick on only a slightly higher level than that employed in The Crying Game, nevertheless, there is a haunting depth to the exploration of a very real problem: what do you DO when you find the "ONE" and then discover suddenly that that person is going to die a lot sooner than you expected? I think many critics miss the real focus of the novel: it's not so much about sexuality, it's about facing mortality. The real flaw in the novel is not her non-gender-specific narrator (which I found fascinating as a device, even if "my" narrator changed in my head from a woman to a man from first sitting with the book to the second (about a month or two apart)), but the rather lengthy exploration of biology and the painstaking connections with the loved one. It is heaviness at a moment when there needs to be a pause for air, an emptiness, a silence. When she finally comes out of this section, and leads to her conclusion, she arrives at the heart of an emptional suffering more than amply justified. This is not Hollywood: this is a person who has found and given up what may have been the best thing that has ever happened in this person's life. As a result this person returns to an earlier pattern of behavior, that may be common enough in reality to become the subject of more than one bad Hollywood movie: taking yet another lover so as not to be alone. And if the ending leaves the reader with a coldness, then the novel has succeeded, for the emotional state it is striving to realize in its narrator is ultimately one of coldness: the coldness of despair.
Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking and Intense
Review: Jeanette Winterson is an incredible literary artist. Winterson's Written On The Body depicts the life of the narrator through relationships: whose name and gender is not specified, but may be assumed to be female. Taking place in modern day Britain, the narrator in Written On is portrayed as very independent in thought and nature. Insightful intrusions of the narrators realizations of love and self-identity are evident. The main characters' discoveries of self-identity, in relation to love and/or desire through intimate relationships, primarily love. Written in an intrusive framing narrative, Winterson tells the story of the main characters' loves, trials and tribulations perfectly. Although it is a little difficult to begin reading--the non-specific gender identity of the main character is a little confusing. The situations, the characteristitcs of the various lovers are so crystal clear, probably every reader can relate to one of the persons, or situations. Written On The Body is heartfelt and genuine. If you haven't already been intrigued by all of love's cliches, you will definitely be intrigued by Winterson's attempt to define "Why is the measure of love loss?"
Rating:
Summary: Great start, mediocre middle, sloppy end
Review: Despite Winterson's neat prose and fluid style, Written on the Body cannot achieve what it ultimately wants. It begins with a bang, but is followed by a whisper (The Waste Land comes to mind). The first twenty to thirty pages are lucid and clever, a play on fiction itself and a brilliant tossing around of Caliban and the narrator in a kind of dream-meta-fiction. That this is followed by a horrid sentimentalism is somewhat shocking. Winterson's seeming point (to write a love made not by cliches but stripped bare to the core) is undercut by her reinscribing of all the cliches on a more lusty level. For a love story, its simply cliches in a langage etrange, rather than an eradication. The end is complete misery and perhaps begs Hollywood adaptation. However, my main point of objection stems from Winterson's strong anti-Semitism, marked clearly in the "body" of Elgin. This problem, previously discussed in The New Republic, seems completely glossed over by the other reviewers here, but I think it important to note. Winterson, in incorporating this element, clearly places herself in the personal-political tradition of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. But unlike those revered writers (in their early days) she cannot shake off the past 50 years, the Holocaust or such events. Her incorporation of these beliefs amidst her otherwise "free" work (the bisexuality of the narrator, for instance) is frightening. This is quaint reading, and lovers convinced they have found true love may find it a nice ideal to try to recreate. Unfortunately, this is not Winterson at her best and it does not deserve the gross seriousness with which the rest of us seem to take it.
Rating: 
Summary: AVOID!!!!!
Review: Over the years my frustration with Jeanette Winterson has grown considerably. She writes beautifully , but the lack of narrative in her recent novels is simply annoying. "The Passion " was a brilliant book because she paid full attention to the story as well as the job of telling it. But since then Ms. Winterson has completely abandoned narrative for god alone knows what. This entire book is a cheap gimmick, one of the most pretentious books I have ever read. The idea of witholding the sex of the main character, though not bad in itself , doesn't work . As the book progresses, it keeps losing steam until finally it just completely collapses and one is left staring at a corpse of a book. Dull and utterly without a point. I really loved Winterson after "The Passion" and I still hope she'll get her act together but I doubt it. The more criticism she recieves , the more she sticks to the position that she is a great writer in whose capable hands life can be restored to the dying art of the novel. This book is a work of intellectual laziness and that's just too bad because the lady's got talent. She has found a grand way of deluding herself. If you follow her great works of art then you're smart and sexy(sic), ready to embrace the new. If not you're a moron and she couldn't be bothered with you anyway. Guess what? I couln't be bothered with her. If you must suffer, there are easier ways to do so. P.S. : When asked to pick her favourite book of the year in ( insert year book was published) Winterson selected this one and made reference to her "fidelity" to language, which most other writers do not share. Indeed!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
Review: This book was my introduction to Jeanette Winterson. How absurd that I should try to use words, which live to serve her and at best tentatively pacify and at worst frustrate and taunt me, to try to describe her writing. I have not before nor since read an author with such an ability to capture in words the actual feeling of love so completely, with the realism of Rebecca Brown and the passion of Terry Wolverton, surpassing both with her amazing style of phrasing that brings you deep into the supreme joys as well as the excruciating pains of love. I have read it repeatedly, and given several copies as gifts.
Rating:
Summary: Winterson demonstrates her brilliance again
Review: After reading Sexing the Cherry I didn't think I'd find another book that would affect me quite the same way. However, after finishing Written on the Body I paused only long enough to pour another glass of wine before beginning again. Winterson tackles the difficult subject of the most cliche-ridden genre in the world and pulls it off masterfully. She takes everything we have ever taken for granted about love and love stories in particular and turns it upside down, forcing us to truly examine what we mean by those tricky words, "I love you", which as she points out are always a quotation. Reading this book we are brought face to face with the question of passion- is life worth living without it? And how can we possibly survive life if we give ourselves over to it as completely as the narrator does? A required read for all thinking people and lovers. You won't be disappointed.
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