Rating: 
Summary: Engaging and hypnotic, Winterson brings light to passion.
Review: Through a style that is both engaging and hypnotic, Winterson brings light to the modern complexities, and unhidden truths of love worth having. This finely tuned novel must be referenced once revelations of passion have surfaced, coauthouring with each new experience lucidity. If anything, Winterson's precise and mathematical style, invites the reader into the interior spaces of the protagonists desires but only through examining their own. Reread, this novel gives new meaning to the term "newness, freshness and day." I highly recommend this work for anyone looking towards the renewal - and perhaps even future - of all passion metred by loss, but nonetheless fused with hope
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, skillful, erotic
Review: Winterson's skill and talent are absolutely amazing and demonstrated most readily in this, her best work to date. This novel is so beautifuly written and so amazingly heartwrenching that you almost forget that Winterson has neglected to tell you the gender of the narrator. One of the most skillfully written neuter characters I've ever encountered, the narrator slides back and forth in the reader's mind from being "definitely male" to being "definitely female" and back again. In the end, hopefully, the reader will stop trying to figure it out and just start realizing the strength and intensity of the love this narrator feels. The novel doesn't lie about the complicated nature of love - nothing comes (or goes) easily for the narrator. But ever present is the comfort of times and spaces past where things were easier and the lover was together with the narrator. Enjoy the book and let go of your desire to know who the narrator is. The point is that it doesn't matter. And getting to that point is a wonderful journey through Winterson's well drawn world of love, pain, and difficulty.
Rating:
Summary: Great literary moments.
Review: On the whole "Written on the Body" is a great novel. It has a fresh perspective, a good story, great descriptions, and a real personal feel. Underneath all of that are a multitude of great moments. There are paragraphs that alone could be short stories, or better yet pure poetry. And there are lines in this book that are amazing. There's one line that's so wonderful that it has become one of my favorites in all of literature. To quote it now and rob you of the opportunity to read it in its context would be a sin. I've read several other Winterson books, and this is by far my favorite. The story is a genderless, nameless narrator has trouble in love by falling for the wrong women. After a series of affairs with married women he/she tries to break the pattern but again falls for another married woman. The narrator has to decide for herself if this woman is just another part to a destructive cycle, or finally the real thing. The narrator and Louise are people in their own right with complexities and personality above just mere characters. As for suspense, I've always been pretty good at guessing the ending halfway through the book, but this time I was unsure until the very last page. In "Written on the Body" Winterson never gives it all away, is never patronizing, and is always honest.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes The Best Company Is Your Own
Review: That line is in this book. Jeanette is a wonderful writer. I loved underlining so many passages in this book. There was one line about how life is a maze and we all seek to get out of it in order to win. She wrote about how we ALL take our parents wherever we go. And she reminded me that Kinsey found that so many prefer sex in the afternoon (right after I saw the movie KINSEY, starring Liam Neeson). She is very original in the way she tells a story. I'd recommend this to anyone who has ever had an affair or thought of having one. You'll get some interesting insight.
Rating: 
Summary: This is the worst book I have ever read
Review: The style is obnoxious. You never care for any of the characters, because they are not good people. They are adulterors with STD's. I read the whole book and after each page I was impressed with myself for getting that far.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, skillful, erotic
Review: Winterson's skill and talent are absolutely amazing and demonstrated most readily in this, her best work to date. This novel is so beautifuly written and so amazingly heartwrenching that you almost forget that Winterson has neglected to tell you the gender of the narrator. One of the most skillfully written neuter characters I've ever encountered, the narrator slides back and forth in the reader's mind from being "definitely male" to being "definitely female" and back again. In the end, hopefully, the reader will stop trying to figure it out and just start realizing the strength and intensity of the love this narrator feels. The novel doesn't lie about the complicated nature of love - nothing comes (or goes) easily for the narrator. But ever present is the comfort of times and spaces past where things were easier and the lover was together with the narrator. Enjoy the book and let go of your desire to know who the narrator is. The point is that it doesn't matter. And getting to that point is a wonderful journey through Winterson's well drawn world of love, pain, and difficulty.
|
