Parts of this unusual read are dark fairy tales, parts are fantasy. I can not even approach conjuring with any sincerity an honest review of the scenes of violence, love, need, meals and fantasy as make up The Passion.

It is almost like a series of unbelieveable disconnected vignettes that the reader visits through a common hallway. I can't describe it except for to say that it is sort of like if Gabriel Garcia Marquez had an older sister who went on tour with the GratefulDead and heard these stories from some crazy europen trippnig people in the car parks and relayed them to him, and then he wrote a story about what she said, and then Pedro Almodóvar wrote a screenplay for Marquez's story, but Guillermo del Toro directed it.

They are a weird tripartate to call upon for help because Winterson's stories are ever so loosely set in a period during and after the Napoleonic Wars in locales ranging between France, Venice, and Russia -about as far from Marquez, del Toro, and Almodovar as you can get?

The author herself on her website warns that:
"The Passion isn't an historical novel. It uses history as invented space. The Passion is set in a world where the miraculous and the everyday collide. . . . This is the city of mazes . . . The Passion is about war, and the private acts that stand against war. It's about survival and broken-heartedness, and cruelty and madness."