Written on the Body
by Jeanette Wintersonpublished
February 1st 1994
(first published 1992)
by Vintage
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binding
Paperback, 192 pages
isbn
0679744479
(isbn13: 9780679744474)
description
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between t...more
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avg 4.15
Read in August, 2007
This is not a novel in the usual sense.
The narrator sounds at first like a man
then later like a woman. He/she has no particular
characteristics of her/his own apart from a voice.
The plot is also barely there. Narrator is having an
affair with one woman, meets another, falls in love.
Lover leaves husband. Narrator learns that lover has
cancer and that only Estranged Husband can cure her.
(No surprise in an English novel, the semi-vile Husband
just happens to be Jewish.)
Narrator lea...more
The narrator sounds at first like a man
then later like a woman. He/she has no particular
characteristics of her/his own apart from a voice.
The plot is also barely there. Narrator is having an
affair with one woman, meets another, falls in love.
Lover leaves husband. Narrator learns that lover has
cancer and that only Estranged Husband can cure her.
(No surprise in an English novel, the semi-vile Husband
just happens to be Jewish.)
Narrator lea...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
romantics.
Simply put, this is the story of someone (man or woman, who knows? My guess is man, but it doesn't really matter) who is in love with a woman named Louise. They have to overcome a series of hurdles, such as their relationships with other people and a terminal disease.
It's a very quick read - I blazed through this in about 2-3 days of reading on the subway. A quick reader could probably finish in one day of dedicated reading. However, despite how easy it is to read, it's also a little overwhe...more
It's a very quick read - I blazed through this in about 2-3 days of reading on the subway. A quick reader could probably finish in one day of dedicated reading. However, despite how easy it is to read, it's also a little overwhe...more
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3 comments
Read in September, 2007
I did not agree with the reviewers who, on the jacket of the book, described WRITTEN ON THE BODY as offering a revolutionary vision of love, void of cliches and categories. Winterson's tale of love and loss is not exempt from cliche, although it does explore the cliches of romantic love with a full awareness of doing so, often in a bitter and mocking manner. Perhaps it is this awareness that distinguishes her novel from others of a similar brand--this, and the ambiguity of the narrator, who ha...more
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Read in July, 1997
recommends it for:
romantics
You know how it is when your friends fall madly in love with someone (a new girlfriend), or something (Guitar Hero, Battlestar Galactica), and wear you out during the honeymoon phase babbling on about his/her/its awesomeness, sometimes in excruciating detail? If you're not in a similar situation, or worse, wish you were, it's damn near unendurable.
For God's sake, don't read this book unless you can stand to read about sheer, uninhibited passion, often in graphic detail. The pointedly gende...more
For God's sake, don't read this book unless you can stand to read about sheer, uninhibited passion, often in graphic detail. The pointedly gende...more
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THE FACE: THERE ARE THIRTEEN BONES THAT FORM THE SKELETON OF THE FACE. FOR COMPLETENESS THE FRONTAL BONE SHOULD BE ADDED.
Of the visions that come to me waking and sleeping the most insistent is your face. Your face, mirror-smooth and mirror-clear. Your face under the moon, silvered with cool reflection, your face in its mystery, revealing me.
I cut out your face where it had caught in the ice on the pond, your face bigger than my body, your mouth filled with water. I held you against my chest on that snowy day, the outline of you jagged into my jacket. When I put my lips to your frozen cheek you burned me. The skin tore at the corner of my mouth, my mouth filled with blood. The closer I held you to me, the faster you melted away. I held you as Death will hold you. Death that slowly pulls down the skin's heavy curtain to expose the bony cage behind.
The skin loosens, yellows like limestone, like limestone worn by time, shows up the marbling of veins. The pale translucency hardens and grows cold. The bones themselves yellow into tusks.
Your face gores me. I am run through. Into the holes I pack splinters of hope but hope does not heal me. Should I pad my eyes with forgetfulness, eyes grown thin through looking? Frontal bone, palatine bones, nasal bones, lacrimal bones, cheek bones, maxilla, vomer, inferior conchae, mandible.
Those are my shields, those are my blankets, those words don't remind me of your face (...more
Of the visions that come to me waking and sleeping the most insistent is your face. Your face, mirror-smooth and mirror-clear. Your face under the moon, silvered with cool reflection, your face in its mystery, revealing me.
I cut out your face where it had caught in the ice on the pond, your face bigger than my body, your mouth filled with water. I held you against my chest on that snowy day, the outline of you jagged into my jacket. When I put my lips to your frozen cheek you burned me. The skin tore at the corner of my mouth, my mouth filled with blood. The closer I held you to me, the faster you melted away. I held you as Death will hold you. Death that slowly pulls down the skin's heavy curtain to expose the bony cage behind.
The skin loosens, yellows like limestone, like limestone worn by time, shows up the marbling of veins. The pale translucency hardens and grows cold. The bones themselves yellow into tusks.
Your face gores me. I am run through. Into the holes I pack splinters of hope but hope does not heal me. Should I pad my eyes with forgetfulness, eyes grown thin through looking? Frontal bone, palatine bones, nasal bones, lacrimal bones, cheek bones, maxilla, vomer, inferior conchae, mandible.
Those are my shields, those are my blankets, those words don't remind me of your face (...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone who loves love
I was reading thru some of the reviews for this book. I'll just say that it's beautifully written. This book moved me. I cried with about twenty pages to go. My heart expanded and ached a little bit. I felt for the narrator (who we have to guess woman or man?) and for Louise. I love the narrator. This book is about love, relationships, loss, and is a bit hope filled at the end. The opening sentence: Why is the measure of love loss? and the book takes you from there. I finished it in a day...more
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Read in August, 2000
I read this book for the first time about 8 years ago, and have re-read it recently.
I think Jeanette Winterson is overrated, but that being said, here are some things I enjoyed/loved about the book:
The narrator is genderless. This is fabulous. It's been interesting to read reviews of this book and see people struggling/tending to want to attribute a gender to the narrator. And for what? This is a story of love.
The book reads almost like an a series of poetic short stories linked ...more
I think Jeanette Winterson is overrated, but that being said, here are some things I enjoyed/loved about the book:
The narrator is genderless. This is fabulous. It's been interesting to read reviews of this book and see people struggling/tending to want to attribute a gender to the narrator. And for what? This is a story of love.
The book reads almost like an a series of poetic short stories linked ...more
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Read in March, 2008
A melancholy, maybe even elegant, musing from a love-striken narrator (I know, many say that her gender is unclear, but too many clues point to it being a woman) who pines for and recalls her relationship with her now lost love (who is afflicted with leukemia, and supposedly has only a short while to live) as if she were writing (or praying, or dreaming the story) to her. The story moves briskly, like a smoothly running creek flowing over various boulders and off into eddies before rollig on. Yo...more
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Read in April, 2008
Wow, it's hard to really know how to even review this book, or where to start. There is so much more to this book then just the story it tells. It really sets you on a path of love, loss, grieving, and the passion that goes into a person that you care about. It puts an entirely new spin on love and relationships. I feel like writing any more then that would give a lot of the book away.
One thing I really like about the book was how much the author was willing to expound on, and also how m...more
One thing I really like about the book was how much the author was willing to expound on, and also how m...more
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Read in January, 2002
My favourite Jeanette Winterson book - and also Brian's, the singer of punk/metal-heroes Catharsis (r.i.p.), favourite one. It's just this really heart-wrenching love story. I vividly remember finishing it (somehow last pages and endings can be as memorable as the entire book): I was lying in a tent near a river in Norway with my best friend, it was dusk and all was quiet except for the sound of the water. It really couldn't have been better! I am a fan of Winterson, although I must admit I have...more
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Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
people already in it
Okay I'll give it to her - this is a good jump from "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit" from J.W., but it's not the lesbian Bible as some are making it out to be either!
The narrator makes the book. She is a convincing character that no one wants to associate with but everyone does (some parts of her, admit it). It keeps you going with the author but almost as a guilty pleasure. You want to scream at her while also sympathisizing. But when our narrator is taken out of the book (the...more
The narrator makes the book. She is a convincing character that no one wants to associate with but everyone does (some parts of her, admit it). It keeps you going with the author but almost as a guilty pleasure. You want to scream at her while also sympathisizing. But when our narrator is taken out of the book (the...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
poets and lovers
I have to be fair and start by saying that this really isn't my kind of book but Winterson can turn one hell of a phrase. The story of a name-less and gender-less narrator who's a bit of a tramp in the past but has now fallen for a married woman. The narration is poetry - I often found myself earmarking pages and writing little notes of passages I particularly liked.
This book probably would have received four or even five stars, however, if it wasn't for Winterson's seemingly "I'm so c...more
This book probably would have received four or even five stars, however, if it wasn't for Winterson's seemingly "I'm so c...more
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Read in December, 1993
One of my favorite books hands-down. It's one of those I love so much that I go for years without re-reading it (unlike a lot of my other faves) since the sentiment and language stick with me so indelibly. Jeanette Winterson's imagination and deftness with words blows my mind and soul to pieces in the best way possible - she keeps me wanting to be a writer myself even when I can't stand whatever incessant calling it is that drives me towards this profession against all sense and logic and desire...more
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This was a very provocative read for me. There were challenges to what is left of my sense of right and wrong in relationships, there is again that great question of what makes life meaningful and whether one needs another for there to be real meaning in life. Actually, maybe that is not the question the author struggles with - it may be more that real passion in life comes with relationship with another and that respecting that is the real ethic in living. The book ends with several pages of...more
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Jeanette Winterson, why do you do this to me?
I absolutely adored "The Passion", when a co-worker introduced me to it. It's fantastic. It's gorgeous. It makes you want to read it aloud.
So I went on to try "Oranges Are Not the only Fruit". Now, admittedly, I am not a member of any of the target/resonant demographics, but it did absolutely nothing for me. I followed Nancy Pearl's 50-page rule (well, my variation thereon).
Along comes "The Stone Gods", w...more
I absolutely adored "The Passion", when a co-worker introduced me to it. It's fantastic. It's gorgeous. It makes you want to read it aloud.
So I went on to try "Oranges Are Not the only Fruit". Now, admittedly, I am not a member of any of the target/resonant demographics, but it did absolutely nothing for me. I followed Nancy Pearl's 50-page rule (well, my variation thereon).
Along comes "The Stone Gods", w...more
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Read in January, 1996
This book contains one of my favorite passages of all time; here's a little excerpt:
"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation....
When I say 'I will be tru...more
"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation....
When I say 'I will be tru...more
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Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
Everyone
This was an amazing book. It starts out as a story of an affair, but the second half is more of a memory about or a lovestory to the lover's body. It's impossible to tell whether the storyteller is a man or woman, but this is so well written - sad, reflective, happy, joyful - it works through every emotion. I will have to buy it for myself.
A few quotes that were meaningful to me:
"I will taste you if only through your cooking."
"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am...more
A few quotes that were meaningful to me:
"I will taste you if only through your cooking."
"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am...more
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Read in June, 2008
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Read in January, 2008
"Louise, your nakedness was too complete for me, who had not learned the extent of your fingers. How could I cover this land? Did Columbus feel like this on sighting the Americas? I had no dreams to possess you but I wanted you to possess me."
Marking this as read is a bit of a fib as by page 66, I had to put it down. I'm pretty sure I read about 64 pages too many. This is the worst crap ever. I couldn't bring myself to fall for the concept of making the narrator's gen...more
Marking this as read is a bit of a fib as by page 66, I had to put it down. I'm pretty sure I read about 64 pages too many. This is the worst crap ever. I couldn't bring myself to fall for the concept of making the narrator's gen...more
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 4.15 (3418 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 4.15 (3319 ratings) number of reviews: 385
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quote
"Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone."
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