The Passion

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Summary: Passion flowing into my eyes, and out into the world...
Review: The second best book ever written, the first being Winterson's Sexing the Cherry. There's simply no comparing Winterson's style with anything else in literature. The richess in those simple words that grab my passion and leave me, heart pounding, looking up from the pages and seeing miracles in the world. So, when I wrote a review for Sexing the Cherry and told you to throw away all other books, I was a little too hasty: keep The Passion, and alternate reading those two books for the rest of your life. Don't even think that you will ever have finished reading these endless sources of imagination, miraculous transformation, and, most of all, passion.

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Summary: If Ani Di Franco would publish...
Review: Jeanette Winterson uses verbs in the most poetic way to sing through this work. In calling this a "work" I mean that it is more than a novel. Winterson is able to use reoccuring lines like the refrain of a song.

A history lesson that includes facts, but all that ends up mattering are the stories. The divisions of the book are included as Jeanette describes a kiss, "To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts...Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment."

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Summary: In the elite top-five books ever
Review: Although it was "Written on the Body"'s opening passage that had me furtively looking around the bookstore in amazament that I was in such a mundane setting reading such weepingly connective truth..."The Passion" is her best book. Writing this now, I want to read it for the third time. It is sublime. It inspired me to feel, for a brief moment, on a higher plain. I only regret that Ms. Winterson seems to have entered a very narrow world in her published works after "Written on the Body". I am hungry for more like "The Passion"

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Summary: Electrifying!
Review: I first discovered this wonderful work a little over 2 years ago, when a close friend loaned me a copy. At the time, I was going through a difficult period and had shut out my feelings. Then, this amazing story, with its razor-sharp insights, poetic prose, and intricate story brought me to life again. For the first time in a long time, I actually felt things. Each word revealed things about the characters, about the human race, and -most importantly- about myself. Since then, I have read this novel at least 4 more times, always gleaning new treasures of insight into the human nature. I cannot praise this superb work too highly, and unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone who wants to read a novel that will challenge both their mind and their heart. I'd also like to give my personal thanks to the author for this wonderful gift that she has given to us all.

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Summary: Awesome!
Review: This is a work for which this often overworked word is truly appropriate. The talent of this writer is indeed overwhelming. There were times when reading this book when I just stopped, in awe of the beauty and the incitefulness of some paragraph or sentence or even phrase. This was not easy to do as the narrative, an intertwining of the stories of the chicken cook for Napoleon and a beautiful Venetian born with webbed feet, is a thoroughly engaging tale. There are few works of contemporary literature that can compare to this novel in its ability to really convey the essential elements of passionate love. This was my first exposure to Ms. Winterson's work but certainly will not be my last. If you are in awe as I am of those who create artistic masterpieces using words as their medium then rush to read this book.

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Summary: A book that is born through magic and harsh reality.
Review: There are many stories told in this book, all intertwined. Stories that go deeply into breathtaking details of love and war in Napoleonic times. The heroine is especially engaging, as we follow her through a mystical adventure that is as beautiful as it is brutal. This is an unusual piece of work that you need to read in one special evening where it will leave you in a sublime state of thought.

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Summary: Breathtaking!
Review: This wondrous novel left me breathless as I raced through the fantastic travails of Henri and Villanelle, my heart pounding all the while, to the strains of Piazzolla and then Cocteau Twins (the perfect musical counterparts to this book, blurring the lines between passion and obsession). I finished it while luxuriating in a sandalwood scented bubble bath and sipping a cup of robust Kenyan coffee barely tamed by the richest cream. This novel is an intoxicating and poetic reaffirmation of that elusive and bullying lifeforce known to us as passion, and I am so glad my friend Beth brought it into my life.

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Summary: Check your toes!
Review: The Passion leaves me as breathless as if I'd been on the very adventures myself. It had me flinging off my boots to check (hopefully, but in vain) to see if maybe I too had webbed feet, but had just never noticed. I suspect that life inside Winterson's head is even richer than the rat-infested backwaters of the canals. If only one could navigate their gondola through the twists and turns of her very subconscious

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Summary: Perfection
Review: I discovered this book in 1991, read it in one sitting, and have read it four times since. I have bought it for several friends and believe it should be required reading for people who like prose. Winterson is positively word-drunk and readers will be intoxicated! Was thrilled to see it listed as a work of "canonical" proportions in Harold Bloom's "The Western Canon." I won't ruin the story for you -- just pick it up and dive in

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Summary: Winterson's Passion: All-Consuming
Review: The Passion (Vintage International, New York, 1989), by Jeanette Winterson, is a book that, even after three readings, leaves me so breathless I find myself stuttering and gasping to describe it. How can I convey the sublime richness of Winterson's tale, her style of story-telling, her gift of words? If I report that this is a treatise on war, a portrait of a small-minded, big-headed megalomaniac, a testimony to survival, and a primer on the historical politics of sex, who would want to read it? But what if I whisper that this is the story about a young French soldier who was Napoleon's chicken-man and a flame-haired Venetian gambler with webbed feet? And a compelling text on the distinction between sex, love, and passion. The Passion is the literary equivalent of a chocolate truffle: it not only melts in your mouth, savored slowly, but leaves behind its memory, teasing your tongue for hours with its bittersweet fragrance, that hint of vanilla. Just listen to Winterson's prose: "Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different color." Life is full of paradox; love (for those who can separate the two) often more-so. That we humans are such gamblers, for the sake of love, is an assumption of the existence of will in these matters, and the courage to exercise it. That we are as helplessly caught in the intoxicating waft of love's sweet emanation as moths before a flame, is perhaps more true. As for Winterson's writing, each word, each comma in The Passion exemplifies its title. To say that Winterson can write is as understated as saying Edith Piaf could sing. Perhaps it is not so much the words themselves that melt the inner walls of self; it is the voice that one falls in love with