The Passion (Winterson, Jeanette Winterson, Jeanette) - Softcover

Winterson, Jeanette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802135226 ISBN 13: 9780802135223

Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing, 1997

Synopsis

Jeanette Winterson's novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice's compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny. In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects.

About this title

Review:

In 1985 Jeanette Winterson won the Whitbread Award for best first fiction for the semi-autobiographical Oranges are not the Only Fruit, an often wry exploration of lesbian possibility bumping up against evangelical fanaticism. She was 25. Two years later, The Passion, her third novel, appeared, the fantastical tale of Henri--Napoleon's cook--and Villanelle, a Venetian gondolier's daughter who has webbed feet (previously an all-male attribute), works as a croupier, picks pockets, cross-dresses and literally loses her heart to a beautiful woman. Written in a lyrical and jolting combination of fairy-tale diction and rhythm and the staccato, the book would be a risky proposition in lesser hands. Winterson has said that she wanted to look at people's need to worship and examine what happens to young men in militaristic societies. The question was, how to do so without being polemical and didactic? Only she could have come up with such an exquisite answer. In the end, Henri, incarcerated on an island of madmen, becomes aware that his passion, "even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else." --Amazon.com

Review:

"Its concentrated, beautifully detailed prose recalls the diction of fairy tale; its plot incorporates their magic, their shrewd wit and brutality...a deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so." -The New York Times

"Recalls Garcia Marquez...magical touches dance like highlights over the brilliance of this fairy tale about passion, gambling, madness, and androgynous ecstasy." -Edmund White

"A historical novel quite different from any other...it is written with a living passion, an eyewitness immediacy....Winterson is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent deeply abides." -Vanity Fair

"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 book has the enchanted pessimism of the best fairy tales. The Passion is a love story, a meditation on pleasure and its limits, a poetic novel written in a style that is wholly original." -Interview

About this edition

• Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0802135226
• ISBN 13: 9780802135223
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160