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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
i always have a tough time with memoirs - i liked this one in some ways, and really liked the author, but they are really not my favorite kind of reading. that said, she seems like an amazing and very smart person......
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Jeanette Winterson has a very unique background, adopted, raised by a highly religious and abusive mother who frequently delved into the apocolypse, Jeanette left home and found herself in education and literature.
This book is a meditation on her mothers, adoptive and biological, it is a meditation on love and on how you find love when you didn't experience the sort of love you could trust during your childhood. It is also a meditation on the body, on how some find joy in their physical and how some divorce themselves from the physical.
I can't call this book perfect. It wanders. Jeanette uses far too many ellipsis, which drives me crazy. It is not perfectly formed. Yet its imperfections somehow add to the nature of the story that the author is trying to tell.
If you are a child of adoption and you're looking for a book that understands the sense of loss that comes with it and doesn't cover the experience with shmaltz and warm fuzzy feelings, this is for you. If you are struggling to understand the cost of loving a difficult, painful parental figure, this is for you.
This book is a meditation on her mothers, adoptive and biological, it is a meditation on love and on how you find love when you didn't experience the sort of love you could trust during your childhood. It is also a meditation on the body, on how some find joy in their physical and how some divorce themselves from the physical.
I can't call this book perfect. It wanders. Jeanette uses far too many ellipsis, which drives me crazy. It is not perfectly formed. Yet its imperfections somehow add to the nature of the story that the author is trying to tell.
If you are a child of adoption and you're looking for a book that understands the sense of loss that comes with it and doesn't cover the experience with shmaltz and warm fuzzy feelings, this is for you. If you are struggling to understand the cost of loving a difficult, painful parental figure, this is for you.
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I'm going to go ahead and give this book five stars! At the beginning of the book, I did some grumbling about why on earth this book has gotten such raves. Winterson's writing style is definitely unique -- I haven't read a lot of her work, and haven't read her for a while, but her style is so distinctive, at times rambling, at times proletariat, and then at times she lances you with a streak of her brilliant intellectualism. This tale is structured in a sort of novella-length memoir about her growing-up years, followed -- after a section where she tells the reader, "Now we're skipping 25 years" -- by a nearly separate essay about her experience delving into the history of her adoption. But the adoption section would be opaque without the first section, so they make a very interesting pair. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that in some ways, this book feels similar to a celebrity memoir, because it is also responding to the reactions Winterson has encountered to her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, an autobiographical novel that apparently covers some of the same territory as this book (I have not read Oranges, though now I would love to).
What won me over, once I became accustomed to Winterson's somewhat meandering style, was the pleasure I began to take in her consideration of her blue-collar roots in northern England, and her passion for writing, literature, love, and being herself, as well as the way Winterson confronts -- gently yet fiercely -- her own demons in the shape of family, community and personality. Then she jaunts from politics to the women's movement to the roots of sexual orientation to Jung in her exploration of how she became who she is, and how she learned to survive. It's a lot to fit into a little book with that cutie-pie girl on the cover, and it made for a very thoughtful and enjoyable reading journey.
What won me over, once I became accustomed to Winterson's somewhat meandering style, was the pleasure I began to take in her consideration of her blue-collar roots in northern England, and her passion for writing, literature, love, and being herself, as well as the way Winterson confronts -- gently yet fiercely -- her own demons in the shape of family, community and personality. Then she jaunts from politics to the women's movement to the roots of sexual orientation to Jung in her exploration of how she became who she is, and how she learned to survive. It's a lot to fit into a little book with that cutie-pie girl on the cover, and it made for a very thoughtful and enjoyable reading journey.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
inspiring
reflective
dark
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Well-written memoir of Jeanette Winterson's early life (the true version, not the one in "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit") and her search for her birth mother, including a bout of madness. Her early life is the most moving of all the parts, possibly because the passage of time has given her more perspective and objectivity. The more recent past is still clouded in very strong emotion so doesn't have the rich patina of her account of her early life.