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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
i like memoirs, i like books, i like poetry, i love being gay, and i also have mommy issues
so you can say i enjoyed this book
so you can say i enjoyed this book
Jeanette Winterson has a powerful voice. She writes with the precision of a poet and has a hell of a story to tell. Her childhood was awful, dominated by a larger than life depressed wacked out Christian mother. Jeanette finds her salvation in (forbidden) books, which provide comfort, the world, and a way out of the life she was handed. They also give her the tools to become the important literary voice she has become. This is an alternate, non fiction account of the story she told in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
I loved the open, what's nextness of the ending.
I loved the open, what's nextness of the ending.
Happiness and normality seem opposites for Jeanette's mother and she gives her adopted daughter neither. But literature, poetry, and sheer determination take Jeanette to a much better place than she came from.
I love the cover and the title, and I wanted to love this book. There was just not enough to it. Interesting for sure, and well written, this is a memoir of the British author Jeanette Wintersen's childhood in a working class family in a town called Accrington, England. Her parents were Pentecostals and her mom was genuinely mentally ill. She often locked Jeannette outside for no reason, or in the basement. Mom also stayed up all night in order not to have to sleep with her husband.
She often told Jeannette she must have come from the wrong crib, that they got the wrong baby from the orphanage when they adopted her. When fifteen year old Jeanette is discovered having sex with a girlfriend, all hell breaks loose. Jeanette is forced to leave home, and for a good while she lives out of a car that her friend loans her.
The title of the book comes from Jeanette's mothers actual words. Obviously, and thank god for the author, she did not follow her mother's advice.
I definitely want to read other books by this author. I am a hard critic, though, and a book needs to pull me in and make me want to read it above all other reading material I might have at hand. This book did not do that.
She often told Jeannette she must have come from the wrong crib, that they got the wrong baby from the orphanage when they adopted her. When fifteen year old Jeanette is discovered having sex with a girlfriend, all hell breaks loose. Jeanette is forced to leave home, and for a good while she lives out of a car that her friend loans her.
The title of the book comes from Jeanette's mothers actual words. Obviously, and thank god for the author, she did not follow her mother's advice.
I definitely want to read other books by this author. I am a hard critic, though, and a book needs to pull me in and make me want to read it above all other reading material I might have at hand. This book did not do that.
I loved this book. It was amazing and I couldn't put it down. I had read some of Jeanette Winterson's work before and enjoyed her books, but this was by far and away the best. It's quite autobiographical and while I don't share some of her experiences, the emotions around them were easily identifiable and really drew me in. Excellent writing.
Reading this has reminded me how much I enjoy JW's writing
Also- mothers mess you up
Also- mothers mess you up
I first read Winterson in college (The Passion) and I fell in love with her stories and her style. She is often pegged as feminist and an LGBT writer, but I simply love her fer her imaginative prose style and her storytelling. She is great. I liked the autobiographical parts of this book. However, I would have liked to have had more to read about her childhood and how she dealt with knowing she was adopted. I felt like the other parts of the book (literary criticism of her own work and what being a writer means) got in the way of the more interesting life story elements. It was like she was writing two books at once. I am not sure if this is a keeper or a donation at this point, but I am leaning towards library donation.
Read this on the recommendation of a friend who LOVED it. It was good, not great, though it did zoom by fast. It's actually kind of two memoirs in one, and I did not expect the second half of the book to revolve around Jeanette finding her biological family.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced