The Passion: Jeanette Winterson (Vintage Blue, 13)

Product Information

Speaking of words, there are some of the most beautiful passages on the idea of passion and love in this book. Winterson hits hard with some genuine gems: Recalls Garcia Marquez . . . magical touches dance like highlights over the brilliance of the fairy tale about passion, gambling, madness, and androgynous ecstasy.”—Edmund White Villanelle is the enchanting daughter of a Venetian boatman, working the casinos of this otherworldly city. She dresses as a boy to please the patrons of the gambling floor while assisting the dealers and lifting the wallets of the unsuspecting on the side. A dangerous love affair eventually catches up to her and Villanelle is the one that finds something precious has been stolen from her.

When I go in, he’s sitting alone with a globe in front of him. He doesn’t notice me, he goes on turning the globe round and round, holding it tenderly with both hands as if it were a breast. I give a short cough and he looks up suddenly with fear in his face. Jaggi, Maya (28 May 2004). "Redemption songs". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013 . Retrieved 23 November 2019. The Queen's Birthday Honours List 2018". gov.uk. Archived from the original on 10 June 2018 . Retrieved 8 June 2018.

About BookQuoters

There are Biblical allusions (some think Bonaparte might be the Son of God, and like Samuel, “He’ll call you”) and references to “basking” in the glow of a church or religion you don’t believe in, but most of the passion is fiercely carnal. How the world finally caught up with Jeanette Winterson". Penguin Books. 26 August 2019. Archived from the original on 4 September 2019 . Retrieved 4 September 2019. The Passion is quite an emotional read and although I was not a fan of Henri’s POV, I could understand his obsession with romantic love and its transforming powers. I think we see that in Winterson’s other books, it was just weird to read it from a male perspective. Brooks, Libby (2 September 2000). "Power surge". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 12 October 2008 . Retrieved 11 December 2016. There are so many great quotes to take from this book, the writing is beautiful, while the structure of the novel and the way everything is wrapped up is just brilliant. When I read a novel set in Venice, I usually roll my eyes to no end, but The Passion is a totally different story.

When passion comes late in life for the first time, it is harder to give up” and only “devilish choices” are offered: give up the familiar to follow it, juggle, or “refuse the passion as one might sensibly refuse a leopard in the house, however tame it might seem at first…So you refuse and then you discover that your house is haunted by the ghost of a leopard.”Our village holds a bonfire every year at the end of winter. We had been building it for weeks, tall as a cathedral with a blasphemous spire of broken snares and infested pallets. There would be plenty of wine and dancing and a sweetheart in the dark and because we were leaving we were allowed to light it. As the sun went down we plunged our five burning brands into the heart of the pyre. My mouth went dry as I heard the wood take and splinter until the first flame pushed its way out. I wished I were a holy man then with an angel to protect me so I could jump inside the fire and see my sins burned away. I go to confession but there’s no fervour there. Do it from the heart or not at all. I sometimes wonder why none of us tried to stop him. I think we wanted him to do it, to do it for us. To tear down our long-houred lives and let us start again. Clean and simple with open hands. It wouldn’t be like that, no more than it could have been like that when Bonaparte set fire to half of Europe.

In the introduction, Winterson explains, “My own cities were invented; cities of language, cities of connection, words as gang-ways and bridges to the cities of the interior where the coin was not money, where it was emotion.” They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true… how could we ever recover from the wonder of it?” Winterson, Jeanette (2011). Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. New York, NY: Jonathan Cape. pp.17–18. ISBN 978-0-8021-2010-6. OL 16488820W . Retrieved 1 November 2023.Jeanette Winterson’s prose is like a poetic dream but one that never loses the thread of story. Like a sculptor with words, she shapes a form that soars and plummets, that adds and subtracts, drawing out the curves and nuances of humanity in all its sordid grandeur. She looks at the messy, rough, hard shape of us but doesn’t neglect the luminous, the terrible, the magnificent, the numinous…her words create an uplifting emotion, much of which comes from the sheer beauty of her thoughts strung like philosophical jewels, little shiny bread crumbs that could lead to a witch’s house or a sublime haven, I’m not sure which, but I’m going either way. Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted by Constance and John William Winterson on 21 January 1960. [2] She grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, and was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church. She was raised to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, and she began evangelising and writing sermons at the age of six. [3] [4] The falling away from Napoleon is entrenched in the realization that the powerful use the lives of those beneath them for their own purposes, and there is no end to their greed. ‘ I thought he’d end wars forever,’ Henri muses on being duped when he realizes ‘ one more and then there’ll be peace but it’s always one more.’ He also recognizes there is no end to wars once they begin, and victory means endlessly defending territory populated by those who hate you. The passionate intenisty of warmaking begins to be paralleled with the act of gambling in Villanelle’s storyline, in which she insists ‘ gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness…some do it at the gambling table, some do not.’ She tells a story of a mysterious gambler, one of the most standout moments in the book, honestly, and the juxtaposition between war and gambling begins to truly shine. Winner, Lesbian Memoir or Biography category, Lambda Literary Awardsm for Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? [26] Rereading books seems to reinforce the idea that you can’t step in the same river twice, especially when reading again in a different decade of your life. Beyond noticing different aspects, the reader’s heart clings to different elements that compliment their current aches and the intellect processes everything in relation to the world as it currently understands it. Different aspects from both Villanelle and Henri's narratives were highlighted for me in the reread, and the examinations of violent nationalism and warnings against hero worship of political figures took on a different tone today as it did before. The aspects of gender fluidity as well was quite interesting now with a better working language to interpret it and I enjoyed to see how progressive this novel was for its time. The biggest thing I noticed was that this book is indeed amazing and I would be reading many more Winterson books.

Although wherever you’re going is always in front of you there is no such thing as straight ahead.” Though nominally a historical novel, Winterson takes considerable liberties with the depiction of the historical setting and various strategies for interpreting the historical—making the novel historiographic metafiction. [4] The novel also explores themes like passion, constructions of gender and sexuality, and broader themes common to 1980s and 90s British fiction. [4] Parts of the novel are set in Venice—Winterson had yet to visit the city when she wrote about it, and the depiction was entirely fictional. [3] Plot [ edit ] Lowdon, Claire. "12 Bytes by Jeanette Winterson review — but was it written by a robot?". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on 3 August 2021 . Retrieved 19 September 2021. Stories and even diaries are not, need not, be true: “The way you see it now is no more real than the way you’ll see it then.” If stories make people happy, “Why not?”

The Passion is a novel by Jeannette Winterson that places a magical realist perspective on the period of the Napoleonic Wars in France. Structured in alternating segments by two narrators, it follows Henri, a member of Napoleon Bonaparte's kitchen staff who later joins his army, and Villanelle, a Venetian woman who passes as a man to enjoy the privileges and protections of Venetian men. The city I come from is a changeable city. It is not always the same size. Streets appear and disappear overnight, new waterways force themselves over dry land.” In 2009, Winterson donated the short story "Dog Days" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, covering four collections of UK stories by 38 authors. Her story appeared in the Fire collection. [18] She also supported the relaunch of the Bush Theatre in London's Shepherd's Bush. She wrote and performed work for the Sixty Six Books project, based on a chapter of the King James Bible, along with other novelists and poets including Paul Muldoon, Carol Ann Duffy, Anne Michaels and Catherine Tate. [19] [20]