Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Discovering this author has been such a rewarding experience. The memoir is generous and funny and so interesting. Particularly fascinating for people interested in the Mother-daughter relationship.

I am struck by how deftly this memoir combines memory, reflection, history, love of life and a sense of place through imagery and scattered quotes that, despite their relative parsimony for a memoir, paint unforgettable scenes for the reader, all the while casting sounding lines to the depths, where Winterson is both lost at sea and at home in the universe.

A poignant account of a difficult and seemingly lonely childhood which brought me to
tears many times. She is a survivor though and was not seeking sympathy just writing
Of her reality. A book to be read again.

I have no words. This resonates so strongly with me in everything. Winterson has this uncanny ability to just put what you feel into simple, clear language. I will be reading this book again, and again, and again.

This memoir was enjoyable, however, I think the author's skills as a writer are way overblown. I think there were a lot of "missed opportunities" and yet, there were other thoughts that were not very well developed. After this author's upbringing, I can see the need for lots of therapy. At the conclusion of the book, the author's rage is palpable. This is a pro-life story that is a wonderful argument for abortion!!

I love Jeanette Winterson's writing in general. This, although non-fiction, delivered a similar satisfaction. She is clearly a deep, seeking, honest & generous Soul. A must-read for any Winterson fan, and also for any of us who have carried similar, educating wounds.

I had never read anything by Jeanette Winterson before, and her style of writing is intriguing and not a quick read, in this book at least for me. But that is in a way good news. I found her prose poetic at times, and her descriptions and insights were worth the time it took to gently absorb and savor them. I would like to check out some of her fiction writing soon.

I thought the book was very well written. My husband is from Liverpool so I knew a lot of the words and phrases she used that may have confused some people. It also made me decide to read a few of the books she mentioned such as The Open Door. I look forward to reading her book "Oranges as well.

I really enjoyed this memoir. Winterson writes a riveting story that has as much pathos as it has humor. Did anyone else experience problems with his or her Kindle version? I had sentence drops and other glitches. Sigh.

Had I not seen the BBC documentary on Jeanette Winterton, nothing would have induced me to even look at the book. The title smacks of one of those self-help books I'm delighted I read it. Her writing is bald and honest and tells the story of her struggle to survive a childhood which wd have defeated many. Not only is she a survivor, but her tale of survival is told with great humour and poigniancy.

Let me preface this by saying that I have purchased 95% of Miss Winterson's books from before the dawn of the Internet age. I loved her earlier work. I really did. But it took me a few months to read this one. Why? I found it opportunistic and quite "woe-is-me" with frequent quotes from... her own work. And if she wasn't quoting herself, she was regaling us with pedantic comparison of her Strum und Drang to classical Greek literature, just in case you forgot that she went to Oxford. And dammit she is smart. And she went to Oxford.

After indulging the author's pathos and psychedelic recollections, you wonder why she never mentioned the pillars of her past again; the simple folks from Accrington who helped her become what she is - Janey, Mrs. Ratlow, former girlfriends whom she unceremoniously dumped. So when she ended with her reciprocal rejection of her birth mother, you knew it was just par for the course. Her frequent allusions to her fame and awards, after a while, seemed almost trite and were meant to remind the reader of her importance. And yes, that she's smart and went to Oxford. The BBC adaptation of Oranges was hardly known in the US - I saw it on A&E at 3am! It was never shown on PBS and BBCA was not yet in existence. BAFTA was unknown to most Americans so all of her self-congratulatory pronouncements seemed as meaningless as that BAFTA mask award.

I cannot help but wonder if Miss Winterson already had a sequel planned to tie the loose ends of her apocryphal memoir: Janey, Mrs. Ratlow, Mummy Ann, unnamed girlfriends. Because they helped her get to where she is and it doesn't seem fair that they were simply words and characters who did not even get an ounce of written gratitude.

I found Jeanette Winterson's autobiography very bleak and difficult to read. I also had a time problem with it. Even though the author is nearly twenty years my junior, the way that she describes growing up would have been more like the 1940's in America not the late '60s or '70s. I realize that this book takes place in England but I would not have thought that there would be such discrepancies. Even though Winterson's confesses to not being a beginning, middle, and end sort of writer, I'm not certain that this is something to praise. When even the author doesn't know where the book is going, as she says in the coda, what hope does the poor reader have.

Jeanette winterson is without doubt one of the strongest authors in modern England. This biography is raw, graphic and compelling of its generation. Sharing with the author being a child with an overly religious and controlling parent I could relate to the pain of being a helpless child and maybe adult under this situation.

Highly engaging account of Jeanette Winterson's life, written mostly chronologically with a stream of consciousness, poetic style. Themes of love, loss, and forgiveness woven powerfully throughout a story of courage and vulnerability. A must read for fans of Winterson's fiction.

I found this book entertaining. The author has a unique kind of writing style that you'll either like or dislike. The books to me seemed to read like a reflective journal with mismatched and scattered thoughts.

Being a fan of Jeanette Winterson, I was not disappointed by this book. Her use of language is superb and although I've found some of her other book somewhat "mythologically obscure" , this one being autobiographical was not. Heartbreaking, revealing, funny with delicious insight.

Very much enjoyed the book. A bit disappointed by its ending, though. Nevertheless, it's worth a read. Especially for those interested in reading about mishaps with the adoption process, finding one's mother, one's true identity...

Highlighted on my kindle for the first time, a rarity, don't expect to repeat that. Laughed and cried, in just about equal measures. I would say I am not normally gripped by 'quality' writing in itself, like some people I know, where the story does not compel me but his book has it all. So impressed; by the story, the writing, the writer, the profoundness. I am calling it a perfect read and something I have learnt from.

I read three chapters and it was mostly in reference to one or two of her other books, so the writing wasn't really impactful. This would definitely be better if you've read her previous works apparently.

There’s enough material here for a terrific magazine article. But not enough for a book. Instead we are provided with filler, endless musing on love, how to receive it, how to provide it, what happens when it is not provided, the damages that so result, how to recover from the previous.

This repetition makes one wonder whether Wolterson’s is mimicking certain minimalist artists – Philip Glass, James Turrell, Gertrude Stein. There are few variations in her statements. What one looks for in autobiography is description and history, but one looks too often in vain here. What did Wolterson’s lovers look like? How did they meet? What else did she do at Oxford? How did she discover that Mrs. Wolterson kept a revolver in a drawer? Did she write only one book, Oranges? (The constant reference to such making her sound like a one-trick author, although the frontispiece lists another dozen works). Why did she buy what houses she did, what should we make of her love of libraries, who taught her how to repair autos? This is, then, not a work of autobiography so much as it is one of emotion.

For that, one might better turn to other authors, such Anais Nin. Not to ignore that Wolterson had a childhood of horror, but we’re given notes on a life, and an over-large brief on feeling. It’s not enough to note that one suffered a childhood of abuse. Perhaps its terrors were such that the author can only provide them in two dimensions, and the flatness of effect is deliberate. But what’s left is little, and the reader eventually bores. When Wolterson has an original thought, which she does on many occasions, one wants to cheer her on. Her references to Mircea Eliade and the dimensions of home, her felicitous phrase “equality of affection” are wonderful. So with this evidence that she does read, and can write thoughtfully, why is there not more of this available in this work? Rather, we get a drumbeat of anger, of the difficulties of affection, and random notes to which we must accrue meaning: when stressed, she falls asleep.

But that shouldn’t be our job. It’s hers, and she fails at it. This you would not know from the massed encomia of the book jacket. Once again, it is a conspiracy of the privileged: reviewers who feel compelled to acknowledge received opinion, rather than doing the job for which they are paid; an objective appraisal of half a work.

In the October 28th Guardian, Jeanette has an essay which retells the opening of Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? The retelling is as riveting as the original. In essay and book, Winterson portrays herself as a survivor. Her childhood reads like the darker parts of some Grimms fairytale, even if her telling of the story is often lightened by empathy. Here, for instance, is a description of her often abusive, book-burning, adoptive mother.

"She filled the phone box. She was out of scale, larger than life. She was like a fairy story where size is approximate and unstable. She loomed up. She expanded. Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she was to herself. The baby nobody picked up. The uncarried child still inside her."

A later passage reads:

"Babies are frightening - raw tyrants whose only kingdom is their own body. My new mother had a lot of problems with the body - her own, my dad's, their bodies together, and mine. She had muffled her own body in flesh and clothes, suppressed its appetites with a fearful mixture of nicotine and Jesus, dosed it with purgatives that made her vomit, submitted it to doctors, who administered enemas and pelvic rings, subdued its desires for ordinary touch and comfort. Then suddenly, not out of her own body, and with no preparation, she had a thing that was all body. A burping, vomiting, sprawling faecal thing blasting the house with rude life."

Jeanette makes it hard not to feel some sympathy, even for twisted Mrs. Winterson.

Like many patremoirs, Winterson's matremoir is as much about the power of storytelling as it is about the parent. Good writers know how words create reality, and when writing about their parents, they are also acutely aware of how "Truth for anyone is a very complex thing." Also, as Jeanette goes on to say, "For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include." Much of the essay, and presumably the book, is about how Jeanette used books and words to survive and alter the darkness of her world. For her, "Stories are compensatory."
One last quotation from the essay, and then I'm off to try to find a copy of the book:

"Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear ... Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world."

Andre Gerard,
Editor of Fathers: A Literary Anthology