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Summary: The Accessible Winterston
Review: In my opinion, Jeannette Winterston is the best writer in the history of the English language. I found The Passion to be her most accessible book. Many of Winterston's other books break the conventions of time and space (Sexing the Cherry, The Powerbook), so for readers new to Winterston, The Passion may be her most conventional and accessible book since it stays within conventional time and place. Thus, I advice people to read this book before trying her other works. While her first book, "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit" is also accessible, The Passion gives you a better hint of the unique style that makes Winterston a literary giant (and it is an outright disgrace that she is not more reknown on this side of the Atlantic... the USA side that is). The Passion is poetic with its romantic themes. In later works, Winterston will be just as romantic, but each paragraph will seem like a little poem in and of itself. Her ability to weave sentences together is unparalleled, and while I enjoy the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (as some reviewers compare her to him), frankly, Marquez is a NY Post reporter compared to Winterston. Read this book, enjoy its taste, savor it like a great wine, be stunned by the fact that it was written by a 26 year old (a very humbling thought that such talent can be in one so young), and then go onto her other works. Be humbled by Winterston's take of the universality of love in Written on the Body. Frolic through time in The Powerbook. Become bedeviled by Art and Lies. Take a journey with Sexing the Cherry. You will not be disappointed. And afterwards ask yourself, if Winterston does not eventually win the Nobel Prize, then frankly is the award worth giving?
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Summary: A parable of myth, magic and love
Review: Winterson's writing is always unique--but there is a beautifully peculiar, Orlando-like surrealism to this novel... Set in a mythical, magical Venice where magic and deceipt are inseparable from reality and truth, this novel is deeply involving and startling almost every few pages (if not every page!). I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone... But suffice it is about (literally) giving one's heart. Sounds cliche'd, but it's not. Nothing of Winterson's can be. You will find yourself immersed in the dream-like intensity of this book.
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Summary: A great novel...
Review: When I look back at the 300+ books I've read in the past ten years, Jeanette Winterson's "The Passion" is near the top of my list of irresistable reads. From the first sentence it creates an unforgettable world that is quite unlike any I have ever experienced. The language is lush and lyrical; the experience of reading this was not unlike listening to textured music that is both enigmatic and evocative. Winterson speaks to the kinds of things we ourselves can't articulate; that is her gift.
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Summary: Perfect
Review: I'm not a huge fan of Jeanette Winterson generally; like a lot of postmodernist writers, I think she's usually a better idea in theory than in practice. After making slow progress through slim volumes like "Written on the Body" and "The Powerbook", I came to the conclusion that whatever magic spells she spun over other readers obviously didn't have any effect on me. I couldn't help it, the unfashionable little child in me wanted to be told a story, damn it. With, like, characters. And aside from anything, Winterson's rarefied little world of exquisite language, art, exoticism and magic realist flourishes just seemed like all flash and no substance, a moving carousel of pretty lights and cleverness. These are opinions I'll stand by - except when it comes to The Passion.
Unlike her other novels (do people still use that word?), the lushness, the exquisite language, the faraway exoticism of The Passion...it just sweeps you off your feet. It's truly enchanting. I think the difference is that this has such a seductive, entertaining narrative voice, something her other novels often lack. I didn't care that this was a complete magic-carpet-of-the-imagination story, or that the language was impossibly beautiful. You just savour every word, and you're transported. While it was mostly dull work having to move through Winterson's largely overrated oeuvre to get to this, it was worth it. She's written one perfect little book.
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Summary: "Deeply Imagined and Beautiful"
Review: I first read "The Passion" in about 1992, over 10 years ago. I'm still searching for another book that will satisfy and reach me the way this one did. If you know of a contender, let me know. Other reviewers have told you there is wisdom on each page. Trust them. They're telling stories. "Although wherever you go is always in front of you, there is no such thing as straight ahead." "...only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all thing pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture." This book sank into my soul and will capture you completely if you love language, prose, passion, and enjoy a bit of abstract thought. If you are in the mood for a clearly defined, formula novel, or a sappy book about the plight of the human condition, look elsewhere until your mood shifts.
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Summary: Quite simply the best book I've read in years
Review: The prose in this novel will leave you speechless. Winterson has a grasp of literary prose that rivals Nabokov. This is a must have book for anyone who has a love for the language.
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Summary: I cried and cried till the cows came home...
Review: I had read "Written on the Body" before by Ms. Winterson, but this one changed the way I looked at love. It taught me so much more. Made me a mature person at the end of 13 readings and I wish it would go on and on... Henri and Villanelle are two different people dreaming of two different destinies..Love is non-existing and yet it is somewhere there buried deep in the waters of magical Venice where most part of the story is set. Henri loves Bonaparte and Villanelle - she has her heart given to a mysterious lady. This is not the only place in the book where love and its complexities play havoc..There are more focal points but what I liked immensely about this book was the simplicity with which it was written... The reason why I cried because I know unrequited love and this book speaks of it - its language is that of lost love, of a love so distant and cold that its impossible to touch it, ,to feel it, to provide warmth in the cold, lonely nights. There is a sentence in the book which I love a lot..actually there are two: "Could a woman love a woman for more than a night?" and "There is no love when you get up next to a person by chance"...Sentences like these and many more make this book one delicious course..Read it and be dazzled!!
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Summary: The Passion
Review: This is the kind of novel that "literary" writers produce when they decide they're going to write historical fiction, but they don't bother to figure out how, first. Set in Napoleon's entourage and in French-dominated Venice, this is the story of Villanelle and Henri. It's sort of a love story, but the themes are so half-baked that it's hard to tell. There's a lot of wanna-be style here, a lot of superficially well written prose and philosophizing, but not a lot of substance. The author even forgets that she's had Henri lose an eye at Austerlitz; later in the text, he has both eyes. The plot is insignificant, with events being drowned in maunderings; essentially, Villanelle and Henri meet, fall in love, and murder her husband, whom we are expected to believe is evil, with an unlovely appearance as the main (and shallow) evidence for that. Henri then ends up in a madhouse. A second plot thread involves Villanelle's love affair with a Venetian noblewoman; it seems meant to be meaningful, but it's not. Setting is weak, with few historical details and little sense that we are in a different time. Action... nonexistent. Some intriguing bits of magic realism, and an artistic way of putting words together, don't save this book; I found it boring and pretentious.
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Summary: Beautiful Concise Prose
Review: This book is great. It was my first introduction to Jeanette Winterson. I would definitely say she is my favorite author of fiction. The book is so beatiful. I think one of the things the author does so well is to use tiny little concise prose to conjure these enormous and detailed images in your mind. She is also a competent metaphysician; she's always teaching you something with her little stories. Oh, and I love how she weaves such lovely fantasy into "ordinary" and "historical" settings. It's brilliant.
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Summary: Trying to Describe Passion
Review: Jeanette Winterson describes passion as somewhere between sex and hatred...throughout the book she attempts to define this word. The setting switches between Napoleonic France, Venice, and Russia. I feel like I should read this book again, because there's symbolism below what I understood the first time...the plot itself is intriguing...but it is the vivid descriptions that draw you in and don't let you go. She describes feelings and settings in a very abstract manner, and yet, the book seems completely real...like it did happen...like it could happen. This is a beautiful book and I recommend it highly.
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