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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
Gawd, I love Jeanette Winterson. I always feel her writing right in my stomach. I savor each word, each description for the incredible tapestry she weaves of story and emotion. One doesn't have to be adopted to empathize with her feelings and musings. She opens the door into her life and you're trudging right there with her.
"She hated being a nobody, and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice."
"If you drive along the M62 from Manchester towards Accrington where I was brought up, you will see the Pennines, shocking in their suddenness and their silence. This is a landscape of few words, taciturn, reluctant. It is not an easy beauty. But it it beautiful."
"But as I try and understand how life works - and why some people cope better than others with adversity - I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream..."
"Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the same as being happy - which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine."
re: poetry: "A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it it."
"Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space."
"I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.
And here is the shock - when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into the unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy.
You are unhappy. Things get worse.
It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded."
"I needed lessons in love. I still do because nothing could be simpler, nothing could be harder, than love."
re: poetry: "Poetry is easier to learn than prose. Once you have learned it you can use it as a light and a laser. It shows up your true situation and it helps you cut through it."
"Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become."
"Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open - the only way to stop the story running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants."
"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."
"The century of gas lamps and ghosts. They may have been the same thing. The classic image of a man or woman sitting up late by gaslight and seeing a ghost could have been a case of mild delirium caused by carbon-monoxide poisoning." (I love it!)
"Living with life is very hard. Mostly we do our best to stifle life - to be tame or to be wanton. To be tranquillized or raging. Extremes have the same effect; they insulate us from the intensity of life."
"This is the most dangerous work you can do. It is like bomb disposal but you are the bomb. That's the problem - the awful thing is you. It may be split off and living malevolently at the bottom of the garden, but it is sharing your blood and eating your food. Mess this up, and you will go down with the creature."
"And the people I have hurt, the mistakes I have made, the damage to myself and others, wasn't poor judgement; it was the place where love had hardener into loss."
"She hated being a nobody, and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice."
"If you drive along the M62 from Manchester towards Accrington where I was brought up, you will see the Pennines, shocking in their suddenness and their silence. This is a landscape of few words, taciturn, reluctant. It is not an easy beauty. But it it beautiful."
"But as I try and understand how life works - and why some people cope better than others with adversity - I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream..."
"Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the same as being happy - which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine."
re: poetry: "A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it it."
"Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space."
"I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.
And here is the shock - when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into the unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy.
You are unhappy. Things get worse.
It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded."
"I needed lessons in love. I still do because nothing could be simpler, nothing could be harder, than love."
re: poetry: "Poetry is easier to learn than prose. Once you have learned it you can use it as a light and a laser. It shows up your true situation and it helps you cut through it."
"Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become."
"Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open - the only way to stop the story running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants."
"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."
"The century of gas lamps and ghosts. They may have been the same thing. The classic image of a man or woman sitting up late by gaslight and seeing a ghost could have been a case of mild delirium caused by carbon-monoxide poisoning." (I love it!)
"Living with life is very hard. Mostly we do our best to stifle life - to be tame or to be wanton. To be tranquillized or raging. Extremes have the same effect; they insulate us from the intensity of life."
"This is the most dangerous work you can do. It is like bomb disposal but you are the bomb. That's the problem - the awful thing is you. It may be split off and living malevolently at the bottom of the garden, but it is sharing your blood and eating your food. Mess this up, and you will go down with the creature."
"And the people I have hurt, the mistakes I have made, the damage to myself and others, wasn't poor judgement; it was the place where love had hardener into loss."
My first Jeannette Winterson, after years of Emily telling me to read her! I was going to subtract one star for how often I wanted to skip paragraphs that didn't not contribute to the non-structure... But then I hit the chapter about the library, and her depression, and climbing out, and I knew that she would stick with me for a long time; thus, five stars.
"My violent rages, my destructive behavior, my own need to destroy love and trust, just as love and trust had been destroyed for me... Didn't that have romance to it? Wasn't that the creative spirit unbounded? No. Creativity is on the side of health -- it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness."
"My violent rages, my destructive behavior, my own need to destroy love and trust, just as love and trust had been destroyed for me... Didn't that have romance to it? Wasn't that the creative spirit unbounded? No. Creativity is on the side of health -- it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness."
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
Fue bastante difícil leer este libro, no porque la escritura fuera complicada, sino porque los temas son muy fuertes. Durante la primera mitad la autora atraviesa situaciones terribles, al punto de que consideré abandonar el libro porque me angustiaba un montón. Abarca desde el maltrato de su madre adoptiva, el abandono y la terapia de conversión. . Creo que durante la primera mitad a ella le pasaban cosas traumáticas y no las procesaba (porque era una NIÑA) pero durante la segunda, en su adultez, comienza a reflexionar sobre su pasado y sanar sus heridas.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Death of parent, Lesbophobia, Outing, Abandonment
Insightful - grounded me in her life and made me feel like I understood her novels a bit more.
'listen, we are human beings. listen, we are inclined to love'
It's always a challenge and seems so unfair to rate someone's personal account of their life. How do you critique that?! It feels very much like you are judging how someone lived or don't believe their version of it... don't like how they chose to tell it. Just... hard. But I will try.
What I liked about it: I really enjoy reading and because of this I also enjoy reading about people who enjoy reading. Her passion for language and literature and the saving power she found in them, chefs kiss. And I appreciated her honesty. Will not elaborate, as I don't want to spoil anything.
What I didn't like: it kind of jumped around, not unlike conversation, but also not exactly how I enjoy writing to be in books I read.
What I liked about it: I really enjoy reading and because of this I also enjoy reading about people who enjoy reading. Her passion for language and literature and the saving power she found in them, chefs kiss. And I appreciated her honesty. Will not elaborate, as I don't want to spoil anything.
What I didn't like: it kind of jumped around, not unlike conversation, but also not exactly how I enjoy writing to be in books I read.
It took me 10 months to listen to this audiobook simply because of lack of opportunity.
I really enjoyed it, Jeanette narrated her life story which is extremely sad at times.
She has turned out to be a strong powerful woman in spite of her upbringing and is to be admired for her spirit and outlook on life
I really enjoyed it, Jeanette narrated her life story which is extremely sad at times.
She has turned out to be a strong powerful woman in spite of her upbringing and is to be admired for her spirit and outlook on life
This was very well written. I probably didn't get as much out of it as I could have, since I've never read anything else by the author. I still found it entertaining and interesting though.
I’ve never heard about our author before this book but apparently she has had some pretty noteworthy releases! From what I gleamed from her references to her other books this was a bit more of a behind the scenes/look at her life journey. A unique memoir about Jeanette’s life as someone who was adopted into an incredibly unique family and how that shaped her to be the person she is. Her adopted mother posed unique challenges being incredibly religious yet closed minded and attempting to force Jeannette to fit her misconstrued mold of a daughter. As anyone with super controlling parents does, Jeanette learned to find herself and explore her love for books in secret. Books opened up a whole new world of possibilities and validated her feelings and sense of self worth. As someone who is feeling a little lost in her life I love reading stories about how other people have managed to “find” themselves or at least come to terms with the fact that people aren’t necessarily meant to be “found.”
I "read" this as an audiobook read by the author. This is a memoir of growing up lesbian, working class and adopted in England. It covers childhood and adolescence up until she gets into Oxford, and leaps over some middle years to hear late 40s, when she finally gets around to looking for her birth mother. Her home life is grim, but she has great compassion for even the most damaged people in her life. I love that the book is read by the author. It was moving and funny and well worth a read. My main critique is related to that big jump in time. There was nothing in her 30s worth mentioning?