Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

The girl soaks it up -- to a point. Things begin to come apart, inevitably, and later still, as a teen, there's the narrator's growing knowledge that she is passionately, yearningly, and quite happily in love with a girl her age named Katy -- and no amount of exorcism will change that. The affair proceeds. Winterson is smart enough to put it all together with grace and humor. Her bright and resourceful protagonist travels a great and difficult path, avoiding all the predictable plot formulas. No whining or self-pity, either.

There is incisive wit, a smart and brave presentation of the (sometimes appalling) facts; very good use of myth, history and politics, fairy tales, Bible and church miscellany; amazing observation. This is a detailed and often funny picture of a truly strange household, a great girl, and there's a lot of love -- in this wonderful novel.


The Creation of Reality   February 13, 2001
 17 out of 19 found this review helpful

This novel has often been criticised as Winterson's best now that she has gone on to write several powerfully experimental novels. This is implying that she should have remained in these more familiar regions of experience or stuck to a slightly more conventional mode of narrative. What's tremendous about this novel is the way it works as a perfect springboard for the kind of fiction that is being so negatively criticised for its inventiveness. This is a story about a girl who is struggling with the conventions of a restrictive Pentecostal community in a small spot of England, but it is also about the interplay between reality and fiction in people's lives. Jeanette's fables are established to be as valid as the complex religious practices of her family. The characters of the novel constantly differ to a fictional artifice to hold together the reality they cannot understand. Tension builds when the fictional worlds that people struggle to hold into place contradicts other people's realities. This novel is a tribute to the fight for independence and survival. She powerfully asserts that there is a necessary space for these fictional parts of people's realities despite the conflict it will inevitably create. She suggests that the reality built in fiction is also the truth of our own fictions accepted as reality. The interplay of these two creates a living reality.


Language as Art   November 11, 2001
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Winterson's first novel is a compelling story that presages her talent for finding themes that aren't last year's, or even today's, but cut the edge of tomorrow.

No less importantly, it's the first look at a word smith of the finest calibre. Every word has import and can build, nuance by nuance, into breathtaking metaphors that only emerge after you've finished the book and find yourself thinking about it. I like to read Winterson out loud, because hearing words and reading them are two different experiences.

This book is a must read because the true high art of lesbian-themed writing is found here.


In her head she was still queen, but not my queen any more.   April 9, 2005
 15 out of 17 found this review helpful


"We stood on the hill and my mother said, `This world is full of sin.' We stood on the hill and my mother said, `You can change the world.'"

Jeanette is an orphan child adopted my a fanatic Evangelical woman who believes that the child is sent to her by God. Jeanette's mother raises her with three strict ideas in mind for her- one, that she will be a missionary child... two, that she will be a servant of God... and three, that she will be a blessing. Her strict moral upbringing causes her severe grief when her mother has to enroll her into school at the age of seven. The children, the teachers, and even the administrators find her preaching attitude a bit unnerving. As a child her only friend is an older woman named Elsie Norris who is a bit of an eccentric, and her life is completely dominated by her mother's quest to convert all of the heathens in the world.

But when she is 14 she meets a young woman from the fish market who will compromise everything that Jeanette knows about herself, but does not bring her to lose her faith in God. Rather the opposite, through a series of events during this friendship she finds herself being drawn closer into the fervor of her faith. It is not until the affair comes to a climax that Jeanette really begins to question the path her mother has set her on.

"He turned to me.
`I love her.'
`Then you do not love God.'
`Yes, I love both of them.'
`You cannot.'"

The book skillfully touches on the controversy of homosexuality in the Christian community, and deals with many of the biased points of views of that religion that still exists to this day. This is a tremendous book. The story has such depths of drama, pathos, and heartbreaking desire that it is impossible not to get swept up in the story. The clever use of narration that Winterson uses is periodically punctuated with fairy tales, Arthurian references, and Alice in Wonderland references as well- something that surely surprised and delighted me, a literary fan from way back. It's no surprise that this debut novel won the Whitbread Prize for first fiction when it was published in 1985. This book has definitely secured me as a Winterson fan for life.