Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a simple story of a person (whose gender is never determined - though I imagined a woman) who has a deep love affair with Louise, a married woman, who contracts cancer. But most of all it's a reverie of love, devotion and obsession, with language that is poetic and eccentric and - I have to say it - rapturous. I fairly swooned through some of this. The last section, which sees the protagonist come to some kind of terms with the situation, is beautiful. There's a scene in a cemetery that I particularly admire. This book is so not my usual reading, but Winterson's gifts for language conjure new possibilities that inspire me.



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