A review by ollie_again
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

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.
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