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21st out of 597 books
—
674 voters
Written on the Body
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.
Paperback, 190 pages
Published
February 1st 1994
by Vintage
(first published 1992)
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When you fall in love with someone, I mean really fall, you become obsessed with the things that are written on the body. The scar on her elbow from when she tripped over the curb, the chip in his tooth from when he fell from his skateboard… that tiny birthmark behind her knee. Each mark tells a story. Knowing the story brings you closer. The burn mark on her hand from when she...more
I tried really hard to like Jeanette Winterson, because most of the women I respect think she is amazing. But I just think she is fumbling and kind of incompetent. And for me her charisma, great passion, and several devastating one-liners don't compensate for her imprecision, scattered incoherence, or the clamminess of her authorial 'I.'
Can't do it.
(Wait, don't leave! I like Anais Nin. Seriously...)
Can't do it.
(Wait, don't leave! I like Anais Nin. Seriously...)
21 likes · like · see review
Aug 10, 2011
Simona Bartolotta
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
narrativa-contemporanea
Ne valeva la pena. L'amore ne vale la pena.
L'amore magari sì, ma questo libro penso proprio di no.
Personalmente, sono sempre stata del parere che per apprezzare appieno un libro bisogna anche leggerlo nel momento giusto della propria vita. Questo per me non è stato affatto il momento giusto per "Scritto sul corpo". Pensate di me ciò che volete, definitemi insensibile, disattenta o tutto quello che vi passa per la testa, ma io tra queste pagine ho trovato solo una miriade di questi famosi cliché...more
4 likes · like · see review
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 genderless...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 genderless...more
31 likes · like · see review
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. Not a...more
26 likes · like · see review
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 overwhelmin...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 overwhelmin...more
6 likes · like · see review
Her artistry makes my mouth drop open. The most poetic, passionate, erotic book, it sits on my shelf with Duras' The Lover and Rikki Ducornet's The Word Desire and Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband. But it could also be shelved with Proust's Swann's Way for the sensual cling of memory and Chekhov's Lady with the Lapdog for its sadness. The poetry of its prose is incomparable. A meditation on sensual life and the meaning of love. As Carson said, 'Beauty is what makes sex, sex." A lover of u...more
16 likes · like · see review
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 drawing a quiet space beyond...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 drawing a quiet space beyond...more
I don't believe I've ever read anyone who writes quite like Jeanette Winterson. She writes with a kind of sensuality that leaps over the conventional, making it arousing and painfully sad at the same time. It is incredible how she has managed to write a book in which you know not even the gender of the main character, but you know their emotions as intimately as if they were your own. After a single reading of this book, it became one of my favorites; not because the story is tragic (and it is),...more
Jan 09, 2009
marissa
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
those who talk incessantly about their love affairs to bored overly-polite friends
Recommended to marissa by:
i read this for a class
Gah -- I found this insufferably narcissistic and eye-rolling to read, devoid of any sympathetic characters save the zoo-lady Jacqueline, and incredibly unsatisfying in every way. The only reason I gave it two stars is because Winterson obviously has talent -- there were a few places where the imagery was striking enough to pierce my annoyance -- and clearly this is a matter of taste and preference. It's technically and emotionally proficient, but just doesn't resonate with me personally.
This was one of my first exposures to lesbian fiction; even though it wasn't supposed to be b/c the protagonist's gender is never clear, but reading it you just knew the author was putting herself in the protagonist's shoes (and I swear I read in my research of the book later that she was having an affair w/ her editor who was married at the time).
Anyway, I remember reading a review of the book in the Metro Times in Detroit and went to Borders to find it; found it, and stood in the WXYZ section...more
Anyway, I remember reading a review of the book in the Metro Times in Detroit and went to Borders to find it; found it, and stood in the WXYZ section...more
4 likes · like · see review
***I've never done this before but I just upgraded this review from 2 to a whopping 4 stars. I just felt that I haven't been fair; I can't continually quote this book in other places (which I have done repeatedly), not to mention put it in my most highly regarded "books that halt time" shelf, yet stand by my 2 star rating without appearing hypocritical. I've had this problem with other books - Blindness by Saramago comes to mind - not particularly enjoying all its bits but finding its entire bas...more
1 like · like · see review
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
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 leaves lover, regrets he...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 leaves lover, regrets he...more
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 true to you' I m...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 true to you' I m...more
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 re...more
I feel like Jeanette Winterson is someone I'm supposed to like, but in reality, I find her work to be frustratingly uneven and myopic. Maybe I'm not highbrow enough for her stuff, or maybe it's just too naval-gazing! This prompted some interesting discussion in my book group, though. Some people adored the nonspecificity of the narrator's gender. I thought it came off as a bit of a literary trick, though. Still, it was interesting that all the lesbian readers thought the narrator was female, and...more
The world is seen through the lens of gender. Most people don’t realise this, but when you think about it you will see gender everywhere. For example when a baby is born; the most important question is that of the sex. It apparently means something if it is a boy or a girl, we link it with certain prepositions. Whether you are a man or a woman, tells us (at least we think it does) about your life, likes and chances. The novel of Jeanette Winterson is an exploration into the importance of the sex...more
I purchased this book for a "Queer Theory" class I never attended due to that semester at my meaningless liberal arts college I believed at the time that I had fallen in love with a girl who I just couldn't keep, a gay man whom I could tell all my secrets to and a freckled boy who later destroyed my heart. I had been too young, and in this convocation of false and trite love, too lightly buzzed and drunken dark in the head. I carried this book oversees never to read it. It sat at the back of my...more
1 like · like · see review
SlashReader: The teaser/blurb on the back of the book, doesn't tell you a whole lot. However, Jeanette Winteron's, 'Written on the Body', is a beautifully written book, the language is exquisite in its descriptions and lovely in its poetic prose. But it flowed from one thing to another in the way it was written sort of like water in a stream. I wasn't sure about reading it but once I picked it up and started reading it just sort of swept you along through it with the narrator and all that goes o...more
Emotions beautifully surfaces through out the book. Jeanette Winterson knows how to hit all the right places with her poignant language that makes you want to cry because it's so truthful and real and attainable. But with this aside there is something about this book that also rubs me the wrong way. Within the poetry there seems to be a little too much emphasis on the landscape of the body versus the landscape of the insides, the soul, the mind, whatever you want to call it. It is as if only who...more
Very poetic language with beautiful imagery throughout, with some humor sprinkled in for well-timed relief from what could otherwise become pretty purple-prosey. Lots of good pithy one-liners (I kind of went "zing!" to myself from time to time), and definitely thought provoking on the nature of love. The prose-poem style language did get a bit too much at times and I would start to glaze over.
The book started to creep me out a bit when what initially seems like love starts to seem more like unhe...more
The book started to creep me out a bit when what initially seems like love starts to seem more like unhe...more
i don't like jeanette winterson. oh, i'm sure she's a perfectly nice person, and quite intelligent, but i just don't care for her books, and i kinda don't get why she's as well known as she is.
i read oranges are not the only fruit last year. all that i remember is that it didn't suck. i have this vague feeling of maybe enjoying the read, but i don't even really remember what it was about. that i didn't take anything away from it makes me feel like i wasted my time.
and as for written on the body...more
i read oranges are not the only fruit last year. all that i remember is that it didn't suck. i have this vague feeling of maybe enjoying the read, but i don't even really remember what it was about. that i didn't take anything away from it makes me feel like i wasted my time.
and as for written on the body...more
One of the most beautiful novels I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, and I can’t wait to read it again. Wow. Phew. I can still feel it in my chest. This book was written for the senses. Not only does it speak in raw emotion, but it weaves a tangible story out of so many images and smells and tastes and feelings that are so often ignored by writers. It was unlike anything I've ever read, for sure.
I read it all in one sitting, not really expecting to fall in love. It was definitely right up the...more
I read it all in one sitting, not really expecting to fall in love. It was definitely right up the...more
I have to say that I did enjoy this book (I believe I read it all in one or two sittings), and that it had some gorgeous, piercing descriptions (the scene where Louise is described wading in water still sticks in my mind, and it's been years since I read it), but, unfortunately, I found myself completely distracted by the gender-less narrator. I initially was intrigued by the narrative choice, and respected Winterson for the boldness of it, but by the end I realised that to me, part of who a per...more
Is there such a thing as “too much lyricism”? I like to think so, yes–especially when I’m bombarded with it page after page after page. Metaphor after metaphor after metaphor had me saying WTF one too many times.
But I ended up liking it. It took a while for me to do so, but I liked it well enough. Which puzzles me, really.
In the novel–and I use that loosely, mind you–we have the Unnamed, Un-Gendered Narrator, a person intent on loving and lusting and obsessing, although one who confesses that,...more
But I ended up liking it. It took a while for me to do so, but I liked it well enough. Which puzzles me, really.
In the novel–and I use that loosely, mind you–we have the Unnamed, Un-Gendered Narrator, a person intent on loving and lusting and obsessing, although one who confesses that,...more
It's hard to describe my reaction to Jeanette Winterson's "Written on the Body," because it was initially physiological rather than psychological. My heart pounded and my breaths quickened with both the excitement of compassionate connection and the pain of meaningless loss. Plot, setting, character, and other seemingly important elements of literature became trifles of prose compared to the bluntness in which Winterson defined (and failed to define) philosophical questions of love, lust, fideli...more
There is a lot of beauty in this book. Every sentence is like a poem. You can feel the care and attention that went into every choice of word. For the first few pages, I was blown away and thought I had discovered a new favourite writer. But towards the end my enthusiasm faded. I felt like a diner who’s gorged on desserts and longs for some plain old bread and water to settle the stomach.
I’ve felt this before, where writing is very ornate. Arundhati Roy comes to mind. It seems wonderful at first...more
I’ve felt this before, where writing is very ornate. Arundhati Roy comes to mind. It seems wonderful at first...more
Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body was a book I picked up when Mary Renault’s book gets a little too historical fiction-y. You know, pages upon pages of descriptions of battle and who killed who and a whole bunch of other things I would probably care about more if I found military history at all intersting. Needless to say, Written on the Body was completely removed, and thus was a marvelous read at a marvelous time.
I should probably point out that the most original aspect of this book is...more
I should probably point out that the most original aspect of this book is...more
Clever, but I'm not feeling it. Odd, because I'm usually the first to be affected by poetic language. But it's almost because I can sense that it is meant to be about love? that I shy away from it. My odd prim little self just wants to shake the poor narrator: my reaction is, you think you're so deep don't you? -- just on a visceral level. It can't be denied, however, that Winterson is a good writer who Knows Her Stuff -- she's not clueless. She does ask the big questions: what is the experience...more
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Novelist Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester, England in 1959. She was adopted and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing provides the background to her acclaimed first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, published in 1985. She graduated from St Catherine's College, Oxford, and moved to London where she worked as an assi...more
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“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never loses. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”
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“What you risk reveals what you value.”
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