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

3.75

“No emotion is the final one.”

I have divided feelings for this book since I absolutely loved the first half but not the second.
The writing style is beautiful and I definitely will try some of Jeanette’s other work but I found the pacing really frustrating and inconsistent. I personally like books a little more slower paced, so I think this component purely comes down to personal preference. The first half was fairly medium paced, but as the story progressed it began feeling extremely fast paced and I could no longer keep up with all that was going on. I felt like my mind was still processing the chapters before.

Jeanette beautifully articulates human nature and emotion through experimental analogies and language, which is right up my alley. And I believe this is the main reason why I still loved this book despite my previous comments. I felt the chills after reading particular passages and I know these words will stick with me for a long time.

Some passages that have all my love and reminded me why I adore words so much are as follows;

“Why shouldn’t a woman be her own experiment?”

“In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn’t change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.”

“She stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning.”

“...of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it’s a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.”

“There is a certain seductiveness about what is dead. It will retain all those admirable qualities of life with none of that tiresome messiness associated with live things. Crap and complaints and the need for affection.”

“How could it be? I had rather gaze on a new ice age than these familiar things.”

“What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?”

“I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.”

“Perhaps it was the snow or the food, or the impossibility of the life that made me hope to go to bed and wake up with the past intact. I seemed to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.”

This story is about grieving the lives you could have led.
This is a story about forgiveness and reconciliation.
It is a story that will stick with me for a very long time.
A story that I will constantly think back to and somehow will be able to forever join strings and meanings that I before wasn’t aware of.
The thing is, this is such an intricate story that is impossible to unpack.
Luckily, I think this is a story in which the reader can purely observe and still take away just as many things or maybe even more than reading this with a deeply analytical eye.

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