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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
My initial sense in reading this book was that I’d read it before. That’s because Winterson mined her life pretty thoroughly in her first book, “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,” This book covers the same territory without the crisp structure of the novel, and with a lot more philosophical asides.
The only thing she adds is her perennial love of books and writing. She inserts a lot of her favorite quotes, which help us know her better, but give a somewhat slack feel to the book. Sometimes it feels like her notebook, presented without editing.
But in the second part of the book, something different happens. Winterson starts looking for the mother who gave her away at birth, and the story becomes more emotional and gripping. The commentary deals with the raw feelings of the adopted child, forever lost and searching. It’s very moving.
The only thing she adds is her perennial love of books and writing. She inserts a lot of her favorite quotes, which help us know her better, but give a somewhat slack feel to the book. Sometimes it feels like her notebook, presented without editing.
But in the second part of the book, something different happens. Winterson starts looking for the mother who gave her away at birth, and the story becomes more emotional and gripping. The commentary deals with the raw feelings of the adopted child, forever lost and searching. It’s very moving.
Beautiful and powerful. The ending is just fantastic.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Some have compared it to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and I guess that comparison is inevitable, even Winterson references that book several times in this memoir, but this book is so much more than Oranges. Oranges is about a child who survives a very difficult family. Oranges is a very good novel I would definitely recommend reading (along with everything else of Winterson's I've read). In contrast, this memoir is an adult looking to integrate very mixed childhood and adult experiences into her sense of who she is. The book is so well-written and engaging that saying anything about it here seems trite. But these are some highlights for me: Winterson looks back at her life with unblinking clarity. We see how ideas, reading and poetry kept her alive, and how her fierce commitment to optimism and life led her to shine a light on all the parts of her experiences. She doesn't leave out bits that would make her look bad, rather she works to incorporate all of her experiences and feelings -- good and bad into her life/story. That's happiness--not some sunshiny, pasted on smiley face.
The book develops many themes, but a prime one is her relationships to herself and others, especially her mothers. These elements too are not tied up neatly. She explores with nuance the range of her emotions about the woman who raised her, as well as her conflicting feelings about her birth mother. We see how this primary relationship shaped her relationship to herself and her partners. There is a strong spiritual quality to the work which is interesting given her strict religious upbringing. She may have abandoned the Church, but not the quest.
The one aspect of the book I found jarring was the mention by name of her partners and a few other famous people. I suspect this was also part of her unflinching honesty, but it bordered on name-dropping. I don't think it added anything to the narrative for me to know the famous people's first and last names--rather it pulled me out of the story. But that's a minor criticism. Overall it's a great read.
The book develops many themes, but a prime one is her relationships to herself and others, especially her mothers. These elements too are not tied up neatly. She explores with nuance the range of her emotions about the woman who raised her, as well as her conflicting feelings about her birth mother. We see how this primary relationship shaped her relationship to herself and her partners. There is a strong spiritual quality to the work which is interesting given her strict religious upbringing. She may have abandoned the Church, but not the quest.
The one aspect of the book I found jarring was the mention by name of her partners and a few other famous people. I suspect this was also part of her unflinching honesty, but it bordered on name-dropping. I don't think it added anything to the narrative for me to know the famous people's first and last names--rather it pulled me out of the story. But that's a minor criticism. Overall it's a great read.
This memoir is named after a direct quote of Jeanette Winterson's adopted mother, said because her daughter loved women. And that gives you the nature of this memoir and her journey in this family, which she left early (age 15 or 16). Her adopted mother believed she was possessed by the devil and had an exorcism by the priest who tried to sexually assault her during the process.
She is a voracious reader using the library, reading through literature from A through Z, at home she was only allowed to read certain books. Eventually she finds her biological mother through the great trauma that entails with the bureaucracy. About trauma she writes, "All of us when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech... We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep dived the words." And, "I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself."
She is a silence breaker. She is "dislodged" through her adoption into this family. Yet she finds herself and remains true to her adoptive parents. After the mother dies she finally comes closer to her adopted father. And when her biological mother is critical or has feelings about her adopted parents she feels for them, like any child, she has formed an allegence with the family that raised her.
I really like her writing about Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade and his thoughts on home as "the heart of the real." "Home, he tells us, is the intersection of two lines—the vertial and the horizontal. The vertical plane has heaven, or the upper world at one end, and the world of the dead at the other end. The horizontal plane is the traffic of this world, moving to and fro—our own traffic and that of teeming others." She goes on, "Home is a place of order. A place where the order of things come together—the spirites of the ancestors and the present inhabitants, and the gatherings and the present inhabitants, and the gathering up and stilling of all the to-and-for....for the refugee, for the homeless, the lack of this crucial coordinate in the placing of the self has severe consequence. At best it must be managed, made up for in some way. At worst, a displaced person, literally, does not know which way is up because there is no true north. No compass point. Home is much more than a centerr, home is our center of gravity."
We get that she is talking about her life and her search to find her center. She is writing her past to discover her future.
She is a voracious reader using the library, reading through literature from A through Z, at home she was only allowed to read certain books. Eventually she finds her biological mother through the great trauma that entails with the bureaucracy. About trauma she writes, "All of us when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech... We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep dived the words." And, "I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself."
She is a silence breaker. She is "dislodged" through her adoption into this family. Yet she finds herself and remains true to her adoptive parents. After the mother dies she finally comes closer to her adopted father. And when her biological mother is critical or has feelings about her adopted parents she feels for them, like any child, she has formed an allegence with the family that raised her.
I really like her writing about Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade and his thoughts on home as "the heart of the real." "Home, he tells us, is the intersection of two lines—the vertial and the horizontal. The vertical plane has heaven, or the upper world at one end, and the world of the dead at the other end. The horizontal plane is the traffic of this world, moving to and fro—our own traffic and that of teeming others." She goes on, "Home is a place of order. A place where the order of things come together—the spirites of the ancestors and the present inhabitants, and the gatherings and the present inhabitants, and the gathering up and stilling of all the to-and-for....for the refugee, for the homeless, the lack of this crucial coordinate in the placing of the self has severe consequence. At best it must be managed, made up for in some way. At worst, a displaced person, literally, does not know which way is up because there is no true north. No compass point. Home is much more than a centerr, home is our center of gravity."
We get that she is talking about her life and her search to find her center. She is writing her past to discover her future.
Listening to Jeanette Winterson read her memoir was a fantastic and cathartic way to enter the empty room of a new year. I think only Mary Karr’s The Liars Club affected me as deeply and permanently (I hope) as this darkly hopeful, achingly humorous tale of love and longing and belonging. Unexpectedly she gave me fresh language for the experience of being wrongly or badly mothered. But also, just as importantly, fresh language for what I know to also be true: that going in after the earliest part of yourself, the you that was left or harmed or unseen or had to hide to survive, this work is deeply connected to accessing our essential creativity. Healing ourselves shows the gold seam in the coal.
Winterson has an amazing writer’s voice. Hearing her reading her own writing only makes this memoir better. It’s like having her over for tea and chatting by the fire.
Funny, tragic, lovely, and heartbreaking.
Funny, tragic, lovely, and heartbreaking.
medium-paced
I didn't actually finish this book. I disliked the style of writing and couldn't get interested. I rarely quit books but this one just wasn't worth continuing.
I had previously read Written on the Body, which I didn't like at all, so when I had to read this for Uni I was not exactly excited.
It did surprise me, though, and by the end it I was quite enjoying the reading. I understand it's a very different style to what I usually like to read, but Jeanette Winterson is a great writter and it shows.
It did surprise me, though, and by the end it I was quite enjoying the reading. I understand it's a very different style to what I usually like to read, but Jeanette Winterson is a great writter and it shows.
emotional
hopeful
I needed to hear everything this book said.