Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
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3.8 • 64 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what'
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.
'Witty… extraordinary and exhilarating' The Times
'She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides' Vanity Fair
'Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming' Evening Standard
'A novel that deserves revisiting' Observer
'A wonderful rites-of-passage novel' Mariella Frostrup
Customer Reviews
Irony Oranges and biblical miscellany
This is an unusual tale of a harrowing childhood ... Faith Hope and Love twisted into something sad and strange. Well written but sometimes a bit too heavily ironic.
Other Reviews Unfair
Winterson writes with an honesty shaped by her own experience that is refreshing to read. Her style is very ‘witty’, as others have noted, but necessarily so as it helps breakdown the heavy religious subject matter. Not fair at all to judge this purely as a ‘coming out’ novel although this is undeniably a feature. The true depth of the novel comes from the contrast between the sheltered world of Jeanette’s distinctive upbringing and the reaction that she, as a product of said environment, receives and experiences in the wider world. The poignancy comes from the painful distance between what was familiar and safe to Jeanette and the new world she inhabits.
Well worth your time.
Oranges are not the only fruit
Biggest load of confusing rubbish I've read in a long time