Oranges are Not the Only Fruit - Hardcover

Winterson, Jeanette

3.73

79,534 ratings by Goodreads

9780747510437: Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747510431 ISBN 13: 9780747510437

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1991

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Instead of growing up to become a missionary as her mother has planned for her, Jess Debden falls in love with another girl, rejects the strident evangelism of her family and walks out of her small Lancashire home town to go to Oxford. Other work by the author of this title includes "Sexing the Cherry".

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Review:

Jeanette, the protagonist of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and the author's namesake, has issues--"unnatural" ones: her adopted mam thinks she's the Chosen one from God; she's beginning to fancy girls; and an orange demon keeps popping into her psyche. Already Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiographical first novel is not your typical coming-of-age tale.

Brought up in a working-class Pentecostal family, up North, Jeanette follows the path her Mam has set for her. This involves Bible quizzes, a stint as a tambourine-playing Sally Army officer and a future as a missionary in Africa, or some other "heathen state". When Jeanette starts going to school ("The Breeding Ground") and confides in her mother about her feelings for another girl ("Unnatural Passions"), she's swept up in a feverish frenzy for her tainted soul. Confused, angry and alone, Jeanette strikes out on her own path, that involves a funeral parlour and an ice-cream van. Mixed in with the so-called reality of Jeanette's existence growing up are unconventional fairy tales that transcend the everyday world, subverting the traditional preconceptions of the damsel in distress.

In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson knits a complicated picture of teenage angst through a series of layered narratives, incorporating and subverting fairytales and myths, to present a coherent whole, within which her stories can stand independently. Imaginative and mischievous, she is a born storyteller, teasing and taunting the reader to reconsider their worldview. --Nicola Perry

Review:

"An explosively imaginative writer." -"The London Free Press" "She is a master of her material, a writer [of] great talent." -"Muriel Spark" "Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language." -"Evening Standard" "The overwhelming impression of her work is one of remarkable self-confidence, and she evidently thrives on risk.... As good as Poe: it dares you to laugh and stares you down." -"The New York Review of Books" "The most interesting writer I have read in twenty years." -Gore Vidal

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