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A review by rue_baldry
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
4.0
This is a fascinating and well-written mixture of memoir, opinion, flights of fact and bold wonderings. The depiction of mid 20th century Lancashire was interesting to compare to Morrissey's Autobiography, and to what I know of Manchester now, and knew of Rochdale in the '80s. Of course, the first part of the book is interesting to compare to Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, too. Mrs Winterson is an incredible character, Dickensian in her huge personality, cruelty, foibles and misery. In her shadow, it was interesting to watch the complexities of Jeanette's relationship with her adopted father.
Jeanette's childhood makes for a great story, for all the hardships involved in living it. She's a story-teller and she recognises this and gives us it. Literature is essential to her salvation. She also gives the culture and religion she was raised in their dues, generously defending them as well as blaming where blame is warranted. There are a lot of lovely people in this life story. Sometimes their goodness made me cry. So did Jeanette's unfulfilled need for love from her mother. I laughed a surprising amount, too. And I nodded and I shook my head sometimes.
In the middle of the book, she gives the equivalent of an in-character foot stamp and declares that she doesn't want to write about the next 25 years so she won't. I had been expecting a steady, if opinionated and liable to tangents, memoir, so this surprised me. The later chapters deal with her search for her biological mother. It becomes clear the extent to which her early years have been smoothed into something which now makes sense to her by her writing and fictionalising them, because these later chapters are so much rougher, rawer, and less organised. Some very interesting and intriguingly insightful passages about her breakdown.
An incredible woman. Well worth reading.
Jeanette's childhood makes for a great story, for all the hardships involved in living it. She's a story-teller and she recognises this and gives us it. Literature is essential to her salvation. She also gives the culture and religion she was raised in their dues, generously defending them as well as blaming where blame is warranted. There are a lot of lovely people in this life story. Sometimes their goodness made me cry. So did Jeanette's unfulfilled need for love from her mother. I laughed a surprising amount, too. And I nodded and I shook my head sometimes.
In the middle of the book, she gives the equivalent of an in-character foot stamp and declares that she doesn't want to write about the next 25 years so she won't. I had been expecting a steady, if opinionated and liable to tangents, memoir, so this surprised me. The later chapters deal with her search for her biological mother. It becomes clear the extent to which her early years have been smoothed into something which now makes sense to her by her writing and fictionalising them, because these later chapters are so much rougher, rawer, and less organised. Some very interesting and intriguingly insightful passages about her breakdown.
An incredible woman. Well worth reading.