Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? in AfterEllen.com Book Club

Oct 25, 2016 hayls 🐴 rated it really liked it

Shelves: lgbt, british-biography

Devoured in two days. This is my first foray into the works of Jeanette Winterson, so I can't speak to how this holds up against Oranges, but I am very interested in reading the latter now, and her other works. I really enjoyed how unbiographical the writing is.. the structure of most memoirs as a series of events, usually chronological, pales in comparison to the way Winterson weaves commentary on modern history and politics, and her philosophical prose into the narrative, which meant that at t ...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Joannah Rose rated it really liked it

Shelves: lgbt-characters, lesbian-fiction

It took me a long while to finish this...but then again, for some odd reason, I almost always find books with things like depression and suicide a long read.

Anyway.

This is one of the quirkiest novel titles I've ever encountered so I expected a lot for the opening. Disappointingly, everything seemed to be moving so slow and the cluster of narrative expositions dealing with and about her monstrous mother, Mrs. Winterson, felt exasperatingly exhausting. A few chapters passed and I was close to de ...more

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Jun 28, 2013 Réney Warrington rated it it was amazing

I’m not the read-out-aloud type. I don’t post literary quotes on Facebook, Twitter or Goodreads either. But with this book I have not only read it out aloud to the wife and posted excerpts on Facebook, I have also gone to the trouble of phoning people in the middle of the night and sending out little titbits via Whatsapp.

This book has a quote/passage/chapter applicable to almost everyone I know. From an old man growing old but not up and your home being your “heart of the real” to why beating a ...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Mel Flowers rated it really liked it

I was a little bored at the beginning, but it picked up after page 40. Wow. A story of loss, rejection, finding happiness, accepting life, and learning about love. There is so much I can relate to in this book and it took me through a whirlwind of emotions.

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Aug 30, 2012 green-earth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, memoir, feelings, narcissism

Fucking amazing, beautiful and heart-breaking. I felt her story so strongly through her writing. I felt her sense of longing, her lost loss, her inability to love and how that ravaged her life. Her writing is beautiful and raw and left me feeling so much.

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