Rating: 
Summary: Another one of the "idols of our age"
Review: Jeanette Winterson is one of those IMPORTANT writers who are presented as the future of English literature. Note that I said important, not good. Winterson started off as a bad writer, and has become steadily more unreadable ever since. As an Amazon reviewer said about another of her novels, "Jeanette Winterson is not as smart as she thinks she is." She is a perfect example of the arrogant modern artist whose only goal seems to be to confuse and frustrate the reader with wretched prose, which at least helps to disguise the mediocrity of her insights into human nature. Unfortunately, her followers seem to treat every one of her turgid, unreadable books as gospel. I've read three- "The Passion," "Written on the Body," and this one -and each one has left me repulsed and derisive in equal parts. AS you might expect, all this praise by the lit-crit crowd has gone to Winterson's head, and she has presented herself as some sort of literary genius in interviews and elsewhere (we all should remember that true geniuses rarely describe themselves as such; their talent is self-evident as to warrant no bragging). But if we take her foolish pretensions to greatness as fact, then I must ask: what is wrong with us? Is Jeanette Winterson the best we as a culture can do? If so, then may God help us all.A word on Sappho, who is one of this book's main characters. While not enough of Sappho's poetry has survived the ages to properly judge her talent, it is unfortunate that a decent Greek poetess such as her has been turned into one of the Anointed for the modern feminist movement, typified by Winterson and others. Throughout this book, Winterson seems completely unaware that the reason why most of Sappho's poetry does not survive is because of the cultural disaster of the Dark Ages, not some ridiculous male conspiracy to pervert and destroy her poems. We possess 7 plays out of the 300+ that Sophocles wrote, and those by complete accident: do you really think the "patriarchs" would have destroyed Sappho's work while forgetting to preserve their own gender's great authors? Now, I do understand that many of Sappho's early modern interpreters attempted to rewrite her poetry to make it more acceptable to them, which is regrettable but not surprising. However, rewriting Sappho to turn her into a feminist icon is just as bad, if not worse. I will grant Winterson one thing, though- no matter who rewrites it, Sappho's poetry will be read and appreciated long after Jeanette Winterson becomes no more than a footnote to a footnote in the history of literature. In conclusion, "Art & Lies" is not good literature, but second-rate fiction and politics disguised as it, and should be strenously avoided by anyone wishing for profundity in their reading choices. A real author once wrote: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Winterson's books are neither beautiful nor true.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to put down
Review: Jeanette Winterson's strong command of the language combined with a concise, confident direction make Art and Lies a pleasure to read. Filled with allegory and farcical situations reminiscent of Jean Genet and William S. Borroughs she tells of a sexually ambiguous surgeon named Handel; a mentally and physically molested woman artist named Picasso; and the poet Sappho who shares a train ride with the other two. What ensues is a history of each carefully developed character and how they intertwine with the others, unbeknownst to themselves. In turn misconseptions of literature, art, sex, and poetry are placed on the slab to be dissected with each of their lives. Art, she says is not meant to reflect life; a life which cannot help but reflect our own escape from adolescence. Rather, art is a product of imagination which creates its own rules and laws. The conclusion is so satisfying I was disappointed only that Winterson's fantastic imagery and play of light, color, and depth had to come to and end.
Rating:
Summary: This is not a novel, it's a poem
Review: The first time I got my hands on Art & Lies, I could not let it go; I vaguely remember skipping class to be able to sit in the park and read. The thing that caught me was not the plot, I had only a very faint idea of the meaning of it all then, but the beauty of the language. Those words, combined in ways I did not think possible in a novel has made me realize that this is not a novel, it's a poem, it's music, it's a piece of True Art, and the complex beauty of this book forces me to read it over and over again, to try and find the true meaning of it all. As far as I'm concerned, this is not only the best of Winterson's books, but one of the best books that has ever been written.
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