The Passion

This is my other favorite book (the first being _One Hundred Years of Solitude_). My husband introduced me to Jeanette Winterson before we got married. I still love both of them.

I fell in love with Henri, the main character. I loved and hated everyone he loved and hated, though not at the same time. I watched him make judgments and questioned them, feeling that there were desperate consequences, but never a clear right or wrong.

It's called _The Passion_ for a reason. What seem like bizarre details twist around each other transforming the strange into the mystical, the odd into the fascinating.

It's fantastic. It's real life the way that it sometimes feels--inexplicable, impossible, and magnificent.

This book is one of the most amazingly spell-binding books ever written. On the surface it is a fairy tale but like a fairy tale it is so multilayered that it must be re-read. It is poetic, gripping, and truly passionate! This book is definitely in my top ten books of the century. Time will really be the one to judge this book, already her influence on other writers is obvious (I am thinking here of Geoffrey B. Cain, the author of "The Wards of St. Dymphna), and that is the true judge of great writing; the art that is created in response to great art.

The second best book ever written, the first being Winterson's Sexing the Cherry. There's simply no comparing Winterson's style with anything else in literature. The richess in those simple words that grab my passion and leave me, heart pounding, looking up from the pages and seeing miracles in the world. So, when I wrote a review for Sexing the Cherry and told you to throw away all other books, I was a little too hasty: keep The Passion, and alternate reading those two books for the rest of your life. Don't even think that you will ever have finished reading these endless sources of imagination, miraculous transformation, and, most of all, passion.

Although it was "Written on the Body"'s opening passage that had me furtively looking around the bookstore in amazament that I was in such a mundane setting reading such weepingly connective truth..."The Passion" is her best book. Writing this now, I want to read it for the third time. It is sublime. It inspired me to feel, for a brief moment, on a higher plain. I only regret that Ms. Winterson seems to have entered a very narrow world in her published works after "Written on the Body". I am hungry for more like "The Passion"

I believe The Passion to be Jeanette Winterson's finest book ever. Always a lover of faerie tales, I sped madly through this novel of a chef's peculiar fascination with/repugnance towards Napoleon, of a mysterious red-haired woman with webbed feet, of love found and lost, and of myths, religion, and sacrifice. The sense of delicate beauty and intense melancholy is unparalleled. This is truly a faerie story for adults, and still makes my eyes brim when I read the last page. Jeanette Winterson is my absolute literary idol, and this book surely shows why.

I will be reading Winterson's other novels after reading The Passion. It's an excellent novel, written in a beautiful, sometimes languid, sometimes magical style that makes the reader re-read sentences for the pleasure of the poetry of her words. I was a bit disappointed with the ending of the novel but only because the beginning is so stunning.

A masterpiece of literature. Structuraly innovative and creative; thematically enchanting, but the most brilliant creation of the author are the characters of the novel: Vilanelle and Henri. They are real in the paper, converting the reader into a fictional entity. The work challenges the reader to truly consider if what we touch is 'reality' or if what we feel and dream are really 'reality'.

I first read this book because of a feminist girlfriend I had in college. Simply put, it is one of the most eloquently written stories I've ever read. It is dark and sad and mystical and intoxicating -- and a little too insightful...

There are many stories told in this book, all intertwined. Stories that go deeply into breathtaking details of love and war in Napoleonic times. The heroine is especially engaging, as we follow her through a mystical adventure that is as beautiful as it is brutal. This is an unusual piece of work that you need to read in one special evening where it will leave you in a sublime state of thought.

This is a beautiful piece of writing. Winterson has an amazing ability to write that pulled this reader in and would not let go. Not only was the story incredible and the characters true to life, but the flow of text was a joy to read.

I have never read a piece of historical fiction with such enthusiasm. I've read a few other Winterson novels, but this one is far and above the best.

I read The Passion on the recommendation of a friend. I was sadly disappointed. For a book of only 160 pages, it sure dragged on. I had little sympathy for either the male or the female main characters. I learned little about love or passion from this boring tale. The writing was frankly painful. Winterson seems to let her pen drool on the page, and then ends a meandering and repetitive pararagraph with short half-sentences. She seems to think these little "staccato" blurbs are somehow pithy. I found them painfully vapid.
- "Future. Crossed out. That's what war does."
This is powerful writing? It's annoyingly vapid to me. Or how about this one, in a paragraph all by itself:
- "Mother. Father. I love you."
Yeesh. This is supposed to be moving? I'm sure everyone is supposed to feel moved by a child loving his parents. How bold a notion! How '90s! But spelling it out like that instead of building any kind of believable bond is really nauseating.
This is not great literature folks. I think it is sad that such prose garners praise from the masses.