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bisexualwentworth's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I really don't know how to feel about this one. It was very interesting. Very surreal. Very emotional. I don't think I understood all of it. Definitely the sort of odd coming-of-age story that I don't tend to encounter often and usually find interesting when I do, and this was no exception. I'm just not sure I liked it.
If you have more religious trauma than me you might connect to it more than I did.
The chunk from just after the opening until about halfway through was probably my favorite. Ironically the gay parts were not super interesting to me. Poor Melanie though.
If you have more religious trauma than me you might connect to it more than I did.
The chunk from just after the opening until about halfway through was probably my favorite. Ironically the gay parts were not super interesting to me. Poor Melanie though.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Homophobia, Racism, and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship
jselliot's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Despite being such a short book, it was nevertheless a slow read for me. The vignettes that the main character distracted herself with - including the dalliance on the King Arthur cast - I mostly ended up skimming, because I read multiple of them and they seemed to bear little relevance to the main story. But the main story itself was compelling, so I kept reading. The path of the protagonist from start to finish was certainly fraught with her upbringing and trying to navigate adulthood effectively on her own, which wasn't at all aided by her mother's abuse. Being semi-autobiographical, though, I suppose the very nature of the story may be why the subject was never touched again. Self-edits to maintain a degree of privacy on one's thoughts and experiences.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Religious bigotry, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Child abuse
stevie_in_the_stacks's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Religious bigotry and Homophobia
nannahnannah's review against another edition
3.0
I realize this is pretty much a classic, and I recognize that it's very well written and everything, but I never, ever want to read it again. In fact, I hated reading this.
I know the importance of autobiographical works by LGBT people, I do! But sometimes, as a wlw myself, reading accounts of so much nastiness happening to people like me is ... beyond depressing. Yeah, I get how meaningful and powerful these accounts are, especial for historical reasons, but I could barely get through this.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I just couldn't handle more homophobia, or maybe I just couldn't handle reading about an abusive household like the one I grew up in, even if the circumstances are/were completely different. I don't know. I appreciate the book and the author's experiences (and how damn strong she was and still is), but I couldn't enjoy the book.
I know the importance of autobiographical works by LGBT people, I do! But sometimes, as a wlw myself, reading accounts of so much nastiness happening to people like me is ... beyond depressing. Yeah, I get how meaningful and powerful these accounts are, especial for historical reasons, but I could barely get through this.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I just couldn't handle more homophobia, or maybe I just couldn't handle reading about an abusive household like the one I grew up in, even if the circumstances are/were completely different. I don't know. I appreciate the book and the author's experiences (and how damn strong she was and still is), but I couldn't enjoy the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia
Moderate: Racism and Child abuse
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
je5s_04's review against another edition
tense
slow-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
3.75
worth reading and beautifully written
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia and Religious bigotry
196books's review against another edition
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia
harriet_dolby's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I really enjoyed this book and in a small number of pages it covered a lot of topics such as religion, lesbianism and grief. This book was originally recommended to me under the pretext of feminist literature and I would say it falls under that but it is a lot more than simply that. I have lots of good quotes which I will include below
-Christina rosettes friend once face gave her a pickled mouse in a jar, for a present
-I had stumbled on a terrible conspiracy. There are women in the world. There are men in the world. And there are beasts. What do you do if you marry a beast? Kissing then didn’t always help. And beasts are crafty. They disguise themselves like you and I
-Whelks are strange and comforting. They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly. But they have a strong sense of personal dignity. Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar, there i something noble about a whelk. Which cannot be said for everybody.
-the song was called. You don’t need spirits when you’ve got the spirit
‘Some men turn to whisky, some women turn to gin, but there ain’t no better rapture than drinking the spirit in. Some men like their beer, others like their wine, but open your mouth to the spirit, if you want to feel fine.
Not whisky rye not gin and dry not rum and coke for me . Not brandy fizz but a spiritual whizz puts the fire in me’
-she stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning. Then I was frightened but couldn’t stop. There was something crawling in my belly. I had an octopus inside me.
-it’s an all purpose rainy day pursuit, this reducing of stories called history. People like to desperate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so they know what to believe and what not to believe
Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity. ... to suck out the spirit until it looks the way you think it should.
- people never had a problem disposing of the past when it gets too difficult.
-memory. The imperfect ramblings of fools who will not see the need to forget. And if we can’t dispose of it we can alter it. The dead don’t shout. There is a certain seductiveness about what is dead
-the past. Once it could change its mind, now it can only undergo change.
- when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth
- walls protect and walls limit. It is the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet
-the days lingered on in a kind of numbness, me in ecclesiastical quarantine, them in a state of fear and anticipation
-if there’s such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore
- the devil had attacked me at my weakest point:my inability to realise the limitations of my sex
-Christina rosettes friend once face gave her a pickled mouse in a jar, for a present
-I had stumbled on a terrible conspiracy. There are women in the world. There are men in the world. And there are beasts. What do you do if you marry a beast? Kissing then didn’t always help. And beasts are crafty. They disguise themselves like you and I
-Whelks are strange and comforting. They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly. But they have a strong sense of personal dignity. Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar, there i something noble about a whelk. Which cannot be said for everybody.
-the song was called. You don’t need spirits when you’ve got the spirit
‘Some men turn to whisky, some women turn to gin, but there ain’t no better rapture than drinking the spirit in. Some men like their beer, others like their wine, but open your mouth to the spirit, if you want to feel fine.
Not whisky rye not gin and dry not rum and coke for me . Not brandy fizz but a spiritual whizz puts the fire in me’
-she stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning. Then I was frightened but couldn’t stop. There was something crawling in my belly. I had an octopus inside me.
-it’s an all purpose rainy day pursuit, this reducing of stories called history. People like to desperate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so they know what to believe and what not to believe
Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity. ... to suck out the spirit until it looks the way you think it should.
- people never had a problem disposing of the past when it gets too difficult.
-memory. The imperfect ramblings of fools who will not see the need to forget. And if we can’t dispose of it we can alter it. The dead don’t shout. There is a certain seductiveness about what is dead
-the past. Once it could change its mind, now it can only undergo change.
- when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth
- walls protect and walls limit. It is the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet
-the days lingered on in a kind of numbness, me in ecclesiastical quarantine, them in a state of fear and anticipation
-if there’s such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore
- the devil had attacked me at my weakest point:my inability to realise the limitations of my sex
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief and Homophobia
ollie_again's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
3.5
The difficult thing with classics is that I expect to be blown away in some way or another. And if I am not impressed, utterly immersed or getting some impressive mental whiplash, I don't really care for what I'm reading. The problem for me with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is that I've never struggled with religion, as I was never religious. I didn't grow up in a religious family (extreme or not) nor was I ever surrounded by people who did. That is not a strive against the book itself, if I was only reading books that align with my own experience I would read pretty boring stuff with no room for expanding my horizons. What I'm trying to say, is that though the religious influence and struggles of the main character were the highlight of the book, I wasn't pulled into the story at all. The second fold of this is that the book is written during the third wave of feminism, there are hints at the specific strain of lesbian feminism of that time, and it goes without saying, that I was born after all that and my own ideas and ideologies lie somewhere completely different.
Putting all that aside, I did not really jive with the writing style either and while I liked some passages, the fairy tale intermission was baffling at best and I land somewhere in the middle ground for the rating of this book.
Putting all that aside, I did not really jive with the writing style either and while I liked some passages, the fairy tale intermission was baffling at best and I land somewhere in the middle ground for the rating of this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Religious bigotry and Homophobia
Moderate: Racial slurs and Emotional abuse
nicnevin's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
A semi-autobiographical account of a life of a child brought up in an extreme religious background and the backlash she received when her lesbianism was discovered, I couldn't put it down. I found my mind wandering through on the fairy tale aspects - I was vastly less interested in those than the actual story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Grief, Hate crime, Homophobia, Medical content, Racism, Adult/minor relationship, Outing, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Bullying, Child abuse, Classism, Colonisation, Emotional abuse, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Death, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Torture, and Toxic friendship
brayzia's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-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
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Religious bigotry and Homophobia