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travelsandbooks 's review for:
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
by Jeanette Winterson
This book is thirty-one years old, it has been made into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama, and it’s on the National Curriculum. When I say “it’s a hilarious, beautiful, important book“, I doubt anyone will be surprised.
But I read it in one day, hungrily, and it blew me away.
It has flirting of a quality that Georgia Nicolson (Louise Rennison’s majestic teenage creation) would be proud:
‘Melanie,’ I plucked up courage to ask at last, ‘why do you have such a funny name?’
She blushed. ‘When I was born I looked like a melon.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured her, ‘you don’t any more.’
And it has outrageously beautiful prose:
There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.
Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never be destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.
I wish I’d read it when I was 13 and when I was 18. I’ll re-read it whenever I want a reminder that it’s okay to be different and and how to be brave.
But I read it in one day, hungrily, and it blew me away.
It has flirting of a quality that Georgia Nicolson (Louise Rennison’s majestic teenage creation) would be proud:
‘Melanie,’ I plucked up courage to ask at last, ‘why do you have such a funny name?’
She blushed. ‘When I was born I looked like a melon.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured her, ‘you don’t any more.’
And it has outrageously beautiful prose:
There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.
Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never be destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.
I wish I’d read it when I was 13 and when I was 18. I’ll re-read it whenever I want a reminder that it’s okay to be different and and how to be brave.