Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

102 reviews

thebankofbooks's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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poolofbees's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I’ll start by saying I’m in an extraordinarily biased position as a lesbian who was raised evangelical and relates deeply to many parts of this book.

This might be a new contender for my new favorite novel. I was moved a lot by Jeanette’s story and the blunt, almost terse way she narrated it. It’s compelling, bold, and often even funny. Jeanette is the type of teenage girl who is unwilling to lie for others, especially unwilling to lie to her readers. Her story is not cut and dry, and my favorite parts of the book were the ones when she was doubting, missing God as her friend, questioning who she could have been. I found many of the lines memorable and striking and you can trust my copy of the book is properly highlighted throughout. I was especially intrigued by the various fantastical fairytales inter-spliced with the main plot; it reminded me somewhat of parables in the Bible. A lot of them seem random at first glance, but, with deeper study, carry metaphorical meaning and parallels Jeanette’s life. I was a little surprised by how quickly the book moves through her life, jumping years at a time and then ending rather suddenly. I also would have liked to see more of how her relationship with

Melanie

developed as it seemed to happen rather hastily and without much explanation of what drew the two together in the first place. I feel like I got much more understanding of their relationship after being separated by the church, rather than before, although this seems to be a purposeful choice. The book is less about Jeanette’s teenage lesbian romances and more about the dangerous power of the church wielded through her mother. Most of all, it’s about choices: the choice between religion and identity, family and self, destiny and free will, past and future, and the question of if the choices you make really matter at all, or if you’re simply stuck in the cyclical nature of time, meeting yourself at the starting line over and over again.

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disnelyse's review

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emotional reflective

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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greenrequiem's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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avasadored's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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imsaneipromise's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

i wish more books written in a real world setting were interspersed with magical, mythical stories about wizards and princesses, which metaphorically relate back to the main plot. truly amazing

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mlovesbooks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever.

Heart-wrenching and special.

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balfies's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Absolutely masterful command of language, imagery, and pithy emotion in this autofiction by Jeanette Winterson, who is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. Winterson outlines beautifully the carnivorous insular world of evangelicalism and explores how that upbringing limits the queer imagination. This is a gorgeous, essential queer classic for a reason.

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tesz's review against another edition

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3.75

“No emotion is the final one.”

I have divided feelings for this book since I absolutely loved the first half but not the second.
The writing style is beautiful and I definitely will try some of Jeanette’s other work but I found the pacing really frustrating and inconsistent. I personally like books a little more slower paced, so I think this component purely comes down to personal preference. The first half was fairly medium paced, but as the story progressed it began feeling extremely fast paced and I could no longer keep up with all that was going on. I felt like my mind was still processing the chapters before.

Jeanette beautifully articulates human nature and emotion through experimental analogies and language, which is right up my alley. And I believe this is the main reason why I still loved this book despite my previous comments. I felt the chills after reading particular passages and I know these words will stick with me for a long time.

Some passages that have all my love and reminded me why I adore words so much are as follows;

“Why shouldn’t a woman be her own experiment?”

“In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn’t change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.”

“She stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning.”

“...of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it’s a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.”

“There is a certain seductiveness about what is dead. It will retain all those admirable qualities of life with none of that tiresome messiness associated with live things. Crap and complaints and the need for affection.”

“How could it be? I had rather gaze on a new ice age than these familiar things.”

“What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?”

“I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.”

“Perhaps it was the snow or the food, or the impossibility of the life that made me hope to go to bed and wake up with the past intact. I seemed to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.”

This story is about grieving the lives you could have led.
This is a story about forgiveness and reconciliation.
It is a story that will stick with me for a very long time.
A story that I will constantly think back to and somehow will be able to forever join strings and meanings that I before wasn’t aware of.
The thing is, this is such an intricate story that is impossible to unpack.
Luckily, I think this is a story in which the reader can purely observe and still take away just as many things or maybe even more than reading this with a deeply analytical eye.

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mold_munchr's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I've really struggled writing about how this book made me feel. It's a lot of things, and I dont know if I'd describe it as beautiful or nice in any way, and yet reading this book meant a lot to me. So much of the story felt as though someone had entered my mind and took all my experiences, and then set them 30 years earlier in another country - which I think speaks to just how universal a queer story of religious bigotry is. It made me cry. The fantasy passages especially just hit close to home for some reason, and Winterson's use of biblical imagery was beautiful and added so much to the story (though these elements might be hard to follow if you haven't had a lot of exposure to hardcore christianity).

Mostly, though, it's a story about a complex mother/daughter relationship. I really appreciated how female-centred it was (I kept forgetting Jeanette even had a father) - this book just isn't ABOUT men, so why should they take up a significant amount of space in the writing?

This review falls short of describing this book, I don't know how to encapsulate how it made me feel. It is the realization of an experience I've struggled to put into words so many times, and somehow she pulled it off.

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