DISTANTHEARTBEATS SAID: I’D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THE BOOK WHEN YOU’RE DONE.

i finished it yesterday, and i loved it! i did read ‘oranges’ first (i ordered them at the same time, having a good feeling about the author which is your doing, i think), i just thought that was a good idea. i guess it was a good idea but like you said, it’s not that important. jeanette winterson is very clear and never talks about stuff without explaining what happened in ‘oranges’. i love her for that.

i also love her for her love of books/words, her honesty, her insights, her intelligence. but the thing that i loved most was the fact that she almost dares you to take a good look at yourself as well. some things she wrote about reminded me of myself. not in the things that happened to her, but the way she thinks, feels, acts. 

someone wrote she didn’t like the person jeanette winterson and couldn’t really get over that. well, it is a memoir/an autobiography so that’s kind of what it’s about. but i understand that when you can’t relate, this book might not be your cookie. it was my cookie though (oh that’s lovely). 

i really liked ‘oranges’, but i loved ‘why be happy’. there’s just an extra dimension in her memoir. ‘oranges’ i liked for her unique way of telling a story. i put all her books on my wish-list the moment i finished ‘oranges’. she already is a favorite, jeanette winterson, and i love it when that happens without having read that much of the author.

    “The more I read, the more I felt connected across time to other lives and deeper sympathies. I felt less isolated. I wasn’t floating on my little raft in the present; there were bridges that led over to solid ground. Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.
    Literature is common ground. It is ground not managed wholly by commercial interests, nor can it be strip-mined like popular culture—exploit the new thing then move on.
    There’s a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.
    Reading is where the wild things are.” (p. 144) 

— Jeanette Winterson