The World and Other Places: Stories (Vintage International) - Softcover

Winterson, Jeanette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375702369 ISBN 13: 9780375702365

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

With language as dazzling as her wondrous visionary landscapes, this first collection of stories by one of literature's most inventive writers transports the reader to a world where sleep is illegal, the rich wear coal jewelry on an island of diamonds, and the living laminate their dead.

About this title

Review:

In Jeanette Winterson's first collection of short stories, we are confronted with characters so at odds with themselves and the world--whether our own, familiar world or one of the author's invention--that it is difficult to truly empathize with any of them.

The first story, "The 24 Hour Dog", is a lullaby of a tale compared to those that follow, yet still manages to leave behind the disconcerting notion that a human being who cannot even take responsibility for a tiny puppy has little chance of survival in the big, bad world.

From the voluptuous "The Poetics of Sex", so flush with earthy imagery and erotically charged word-play that the fever of desire rises from the page in an uncomfortable steam, to the frigidity of the "Stepford-Wife-like Newton", Winterson spins us around a breathless, off-centre world, leaving the reader dizzy and disturbed.

This challenging collection from the acclaimed author of Oranges are not the Only Fruit and "Sexing the Cherry" is a kaleidoscope of people and places, with some just a tad out of the reach of reality and others just within the boundaries of dreams. Yet all somehow manage to tug at the soul.

Review:

"A brilliant collection. . .speculative, philosophical and surreal. . . . You will fall in love with this writer." --The Baltimore Sun

"Winterson is a grand warrior. . .a modern writer, a modern thinker. . . . Her images are fantastic." --Los Angeles Times

"Like a literary periscope scanning island after island in the sea of Winterson's imagination." --Boston Book Review

"That Winterson is an original and important writer is surely by now beyond question. . . . One of the pleasures of this collection is that it allows the reader to map the gradual evolution of her writing." --The Boston Globe

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375702369
• ISBN 13: 9780375702365
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240