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给樱桃以性别
17世纪，英国查尔斯二世时期，在臭气熏天的泰晤士河旁边生活着一个女巨人。她丑陋、孤独，只和很多狗生活在一起。有一天，她在河岸边看到了一个弃儿，便将他收养，并给他一条河流的名字，叫约旦。约旦和他的母亲生活在一起，一直遇到了国王的园艺师。园艺师将他们带到了温布尔顿，让约旦学习园艺。后来，约旦追随园艺师前往百慕大群岛，一个据说离天堂最近的地方，一路上遇到了很多奇怪的人和事情：十二个跳舞的公主，每个公主都在讲述着她与其丈夫的故事；遇到一个视爱为瘟疫的村子，因为爱，所有的人都死去，只剩下一个僧侣与妓女。与此同时，约旦的母亲在保皇党的鼓动下，对杀死国王的清教徒进行疯狂的复仇……
199 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
497 people are currently reading
18047 people want to read
About the author
Jeanette Winterson
124 books7,674 followersNovelist 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 assistant editor at Pandora Press.
One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Winterson was named as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in a promotion run jointly between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council.
She adapted Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for BBC television in 1990 and also wrote "Great Moments in Aviation," a television screenplay directed by Beeban Kidron for BBC2 in 1994. She is editor of a series of new editions of novels by Virginia Woolf published in the UK by Vintage. She is a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many newspapers and journals and has a regular column published in The Guardian. Her radio drama includes the play Text Message, broadcast by BBC Radio in November 2001.
Winterson lives in Gloucestershire and London. Her work is published in 28 countries.
One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Winterson was named as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in a promotion run jointly between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council.
She adapted Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for BBC television in 1990 and also wrote "Great Moments in Aviation," a television screenplay directed by Beeban Kidron for BBC2 in 1994. She is editor of a series of new editions of novels by Virginia Woolf published in the UK by Vintage. She is a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many newspapers and journals and has a regular column published in The Guardian. Her radio drama includes the play Text Message, broadcast by BBC Radio in November 2001.
Winterson lives in Gloucestershire and London. Her work is published in 28 countries.
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August 3, 2024
‘Every mapped out journey contains another journey hidden in its lines…’
Societal expectations construct hierarchies that have long been exploited for the purposes of power. Sexing the Cherry, the zesty third novel by Jeanette Winterson, takes aim at constructs such as gender, religious society and even linear time and subverts them with a Rabelaisian charm that would make your grandmother blush to examine how upholding these subjective categoricalizations as inherent truths perpetuates oppressive society. Through a historical, magical-realist narrative that is simultaneously both 17th and 20th century London, Winterson comingles original characters with historical figures such as Oliver Cromwell and John Tradescant as well as fairy tales like the Twelve Dancing Princesses to craft a raucous, femisist and joyously queer story you won’t soon forget. The story follows a giant of a woman nicknamed Dog Woman and her son, Jordan, whom she found abandoned in a river as a child and watched him grow up to sail the world finding adventure and collecting plants. From gleefully murdering Puritans to deep philosophical queries of time theory, this non-linear novel is a zany good time that will make you think as much as it makes you laugh as Sexing the Cherry confront social norms to expose how their logic collapses in the long run while pleading for a more inclusive and fluid society that does away with rigid hierarchies of gender and sexuality.
‘The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body.’
Jeanette Winterson’s prose is such a perfect blend of charisma and poetics fueled by an endless reservoir of imagination. It has the hallmarks of any good fairy tale, from which it is not only constructed but outright grafts into the story through feminst retellings. Her self-conscious explorations of reality as ambiguous and in a constant stasis of incompletion are a delightful foray into postmodernism. The book is told as a patchwork of storytelling across the timeline, rotating between the perspectives of the dog woman, Jordan and their 20th century counterparts, which functions as a narrative example of the time theories discussed in the book. It is best exemplified when, upon finally encountering the youngest of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Jordan is unsure if it occurred in the past, present or future.
Told through the lens of historical fiction, such as in The Passion, blended with the magical realism, Sexing the Cherry questions what we perceive as real or factual. This gives room for a whimsical and imaginative book, with scenes such as a city where words become physical objects floating from mouths that must be mopped off the sky and an entire town that exists without gravity. This blending also reminds us that history is often a narrative framed for a specific purpose. Winterson seeks to subvert all this, reframing the English Civil War not from the perspective of nobility and soldiers but from a common woman, the ogre-like character Dog Woman. Fairy Tales are rewritten from the perspective of the women in them, such as the Twelve Dancing Princesses rejecting (and often murdering) their husbands and living life in love with other women. The story of Rapunzle is recast to show the witch was actually her older lover and the Prince attempts to kill the witch for some mistaken belief it is to protect the young princess’ “purity and innocence” (this same argument of protecting [white, cis, hetero] “purity and innocence” has been frequently used by those seeking to ban books in libraries) First published in 1989, Sexing the Cherry feels like it could have been written today and would perfectly figure into reading lists of feminist fairy tale or myth retellings that have been popular lately as well as Winterson’s gleefully LGBTQ advocacy and representation.
Dog Woman is a fascinating character. She is described as possessing mythical and rather ambiguous properties of strength and size that really only work on the page, which is another example of Winterson’s refusal to accept anything as concrete. Much of her sections involve her disdain for the Puritans that have taken over the country and her subsequent slaughtering of them, such as a very comedic revenge sequence featuring the shockingly violent dismemberment of her local religious leader and neighbor when she teams up with a brothel to dispose of the Puritans who repress sexuality in society by day and secretly pay for sexual pleasures by night. She does all this in the name of the overthrown King, but don’t be surprised that the character written in opposition to patriarchy would support a literal patriarch because, for one, Winterson loves incongruity but also it is less upholding the monarchy than a reaction to what she sees as the Puritan’s oppression and hypocrisy.
What is interesting are the ways Winterson uses this character to show a blending of gender roles. The ideas of heroics are frequently explored in this novel, but for a book with sailors and soldiers the only action and feats of courage and strength are shown through Dog Woman. It is Winterson’s way of addressing the constructs of gender roles, blending traditional roles for men and women into one (she has the action scenes as well as introspective scenes for maternal love). Her rebelliousness and aggression towards power also functions as an attack on the heirarchies of society that are enforced to allow men to retain power over women or, as shown with the Puritans, to repress sexuality and reject anyone other than cis heterosexuality. Similarly, Jordan observes in his travels that ‘I have met a number of people who, anxious to be free of the burdens of their gender, have dressed themselves men as women and women as men.’ He even lives as a woman for a short time, finds it preferable to life as a man, and gains a fresh perspective on life from this vantage point. The gender fluidity is shown as an alternative to the binary structures Jordan finds oppressive and is aligned with his task in his voyages of creating a third species of plants by combining the strengths from two different plants.
In a very Derridean approach, Winterson observes gender binary as a false “ideal” enforced by those who benefit from the binary constructs being imposed upon society and directly attacks the very basis of the entire hierarchical structure by asserting that gender is fluid and so are the social performances of it. This also recalls Judith Butler. To quote Vartika, who not only inspired me to read this book but also helped me comprehend Bulter (thanks, GR friends are the best) Butler wrote that 'gender is performative, formed through repetition + performance but not synonymous with it.' Gender, then, is not fixed, and is often culturally influenced. Winterson has characters that move fluidly between the 17th century notions of gender roles and, through her fiction, adds another layer as a literary narrative full of ambiguities that could not exist outside the page or the inevitability of concrete visualization would dissolve the effects. ‘I discovered that my own life was written invisibly,’ thinks Jordan, that he ‘was squashed between the facts.’ The book exists in a space that seems impossible but the impossibility makes it a better conduit for emotions, insight and understanding, furthering Winterson’s assertion that reality itself is fluid, especially a narrtive of reality. Which moves us on to her examinations of time.
‘These are the journeys I wish to record. Not the ones I made, but the ones I might have made, or perhaps did make in some other place or time’
Physicist Albert Einstein once wrote ‘the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,’ time being an illusion neuroscientist Abhijit Naskar argues our minds create to ‘aid in our sense of temporal presence.’ As with everything else in the book, Winterson’s approach to time follows Einstein’s assertion that it is an illusion and opens up a fantastic avenue in which the characters in 20th century London both are and aren’t those in the 17th century version. Sexing the Cherry is best when it dips into gorgeously poetic ponderings of time and ourselves as fallible and failing vessels temporarily sailing upon its seas. ‘Where will we go next, when there are no more wildernesses?’ Winterson asks. Time, and inside ourselves in our understanding of it, appears to be the next great voyage.
‘I don’t hate men, I just wish they’d try harder. They all want to be heroes and all we want is for them to stay at home and help with the housework and the kids. That’s not the kind of heroism they enjoy.’
Much of this novel revolves around ideas of adventure and heroism. She observes, however, that due to enforced gender roles this tends to mean men go off on quests while the women are stuck at home raising children. And that women are gatekept from the sort of heroics men are allowed. It is a plea to understand why hierarchies and gender norms are oppressive and pitfalls for society and her depictions of blended gender roles or fluidity are an alternative to these. The idea is that letting go of these false ideas would make society more equal and inclusive without the power structure that gatekeep and oppress. In the present London of the book, we have the counterpart of Dog Woman as a scientist observing the ecological ruin caused by a major corporation and that as a woman and not of the ruling economic class her voice is even less likely to be heard. ‘The earth is being murdered and hardly anybody wants to believe it’ she observes and says that these men in power are not inherently evil but instead corrupted by the flawed ideology normalized into society. In a dream where she invades political offices as Dog Woman, her goal would be to give them all ‘"compulsory training in feminism and ecology.’ This book and its criticisms of men, thereby, are not against men per say (this is not misandry) but against patriarchy and the misogyny that polices its hierarchy (see Dr. Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny for an excellent philosophical analysis of this).
Interestingly, while Winterson is highly positive with her depictions of lesbian characters, the gay men are written very critically (this also occurred in The Passion). The historical time periods for which this stories occupy are part of it, but it is also to zero in on the levels of hierarchy to show how these men still occupy positions of power that they use to hold women, especially queer women, as subservient. The men are able to hide their sexuality behind positions of power, such as in the Church, and then use that role to quite literally burn women at the stake for having “impure” sexualities. I will need to think on this more in further books of hers, but I think that is what she is getting at and it seems to be a further commentary on her main themes (there does seem to be a possible tendency towards fatphobia in her books but I haven’t really examined that enough to comment just yet).
‘The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.’
This is such a fun and fantastic book and I could rave about it for days, but I’ve already taken up so much space and would rather you simply read this book. This just works wonderfully for me and I love her writing and the way she examines her ideas. There is so much more to discuss, such as the character Fortunada, ‘a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt,’ or all the fantastical cityscapes that populate the novel and this book feels infinitely larger than its short length. Winterson is loudly and proudly LGBTQ affirming here and explores interesting themes of gender while subvertin any notions of a concrete reality around us. This book is so zany and I will be thinking of it forever.
4.5/5
Societal expectations construct hierarchies that have long been exploited for the purposes of power. Sexing the Cherry, the zesty third novel by Jeanette Winterson, takes aim at constructs such as gender, religious society and even linear time and subverts them with a Rabelaisian charm that would make your grandmother blush to examine how upholding these subjective categoricalizations as inherent truths perpetuates oppressive society. Through a historical, magical-realist narrative that is simultaneously both 17th and 20th century London, Winterson comingles original characters with historical figures such as Oliver Cromwell and John Tradescant as well as fairy tales like the Twelve Dancing Princesses to craft a raucous, femisist and joyously queer story you won’t soon forget. The story follows a giant of a woman nicknamed Dog Woman and her son, Jordan, whom she found abandoned in a river as a child and watched him grow up to sail the world finding adventure and collecting plants. From gleefully murdering Puritans to deep philosophical queries of time theory, this non-linear novel is a zany good time that will make you think as much as it makes you laugh as Sexing the Cherry confront social norms to expose how their logic collapses in the long run while pleading for a more inclusive and fluid society that does away with rigid hierarchies of gender and sexuality.
‘The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body.’
Jeanette Winterson’s prose is such a perfect blend of charisma and poetics fueled by an endless reservoir of imagination. It has the hallmarks of any good fairy tale, from which it is not only constructed but outright grafts into the story through feminst retellings. Her self-conscious explorations of reality as ambiguous and in a constant stasis of incompletion are a delightful foray into postmodernism. The book is told as a patchwork of storytelling across the timeline, rotating between the perspectives of the dog woman, Jordan and their 20th century counterparts, which functions as a narrative example of the time theories discussed in the book. It is best exemplified when, upon finally encountering the youngest of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Jordan is unsure if it occurred in the past, present or future.
Told through the lens of historical fiction, such as in The Passion, blended with the magical realism, Sexing the Cherry questions what we perceive as real or factual. This gives room for a whimsical and imaginative book, with scenes such as a city where words become physical objects floating from mouths that must be mopped off the sky and an entire town that exists without gravity. This blending also reminds us that history is often a narrative framed for a specific purpose. Winterson seeks to subvert all this, reframing the English Civil War not from the perspective of nobility and soldiers but from a common woman, the ogre-like character Dog Woman. Fairy Tales are rewritten from the perspective of the women in them, such as the Twelve Dancing Princesses rejecting (and often murdering) their husbands and living life in love with other women. The story of Rapunzle is recast to show the witch was actually her older lover and the Prince attempts to kill the witch for some mistaken belief it is to protect the young princess’ “purity and innocence” (this same argument of protecting [white, cis, hetero] “purity and innocence” has been frequently used by those seeking to ban books in libraries) First published in 1989, Sexing the Cherry feels like it could have been written today and would perfectly figure into reading lists of feminist fairy tale or myth retellings that have been popular lately as well as Winterson’s gleefully LGBTQ advocacy and representation.
Dog Woman is a fascinating character. She is described as possessing mythical and rather ambiguous properties of strength and size that really only work on the page, which is another example of Winterson’s refusal to accept anything as concrete. Much of her sections involve her disdain for the Puritans that have taken over the country and her subsequent slaughtering of them, such as a very comedic revenge sequence featuring the shockingly violent dismemberment of her local religious leader and neighbor when she teams up with a brothel to dispose of the Puritans who repress sexuality in society by day and secretly pay for sexual pleasures by night. She does all this in the name of the overthrown King, but don’t be surprised that the character written in opposition to patriarchy would support a literal patriarch because, for one, Winterson loves incongruity but also it is less upholding the monarchy than a reaction to what she sees as the Puritan’s oppression and hypocrisy.
What is interesting are the ways Winterson uses this character to show a blending of gender roles. The ideas of heroics are frequently explored in this novel, but for a book with sailors and soldiers the only action and feats of courage and strength are shown through Dog Woman. It is Winterson’s way of addressing the constructs of gender roles, blending traditional roles for men and women into one (she has the action scenes as well as introspective scenes for maternal love). Her rebelliousness and aggression towards power also functions as an attack on the heirarchies of society that are enforced to allow men to retain power over women or, as shown with the Puritans, to repress sexuality and reject anyone other than cis heterosexuality. Similarly, Jordan observes in his travels that ‘I have met a number of people who, anxious to be free of the burdens of their gender, have dressed themselves men as women and women as men.’ He even lives as a woman for a short time, finds it preferable to life as a man, and gains a fresh perspective on life from this vantage point. The gender fluidity is shown as an alternative to the binary structures Jordan finds oppressive and is aligned with his task in his voyages of creating a third species of plants by combining the strengths from two different plants.
In a very Derridean approach, Winterson observes gender binary as a false “ideal” enforced by those who benefit from the binary constructs being imposed upon society and directly attacks the very basis of the entire hierarchical structure by asserting that gender is fluid and so are the social performances of it. This also recalls Judith Butler. To quote Vartika, who not only inspired me to read this book but also helped me comprehend Bulter (thanks, GR friends are the best) Butler wrote that 'gender is performative, formed through repetition + performance but not synonymous with it.' Gender, then, is not fixed, and is often culturally influenced. Winterson has characters that move fluidly between the 17th century notions of gender roles and, through her fiction, adds another layer as a literary narrative full of ambiguities that could not exist outside the page or the inevitability of concrete visualization would dissolve the effects. ‘I discovered that my own life was written invisibly,’ thinks Jordan, that he ‘was squashed between the facts.’ The book exists in a space that seems impossible but the impossibility makes it a better conduit for emotions, insight and understanding, furthering Winterson’s assertion that reality itself is fluid, especially a narrtive of reality. Which moves us on to her examinations of time.
‘These are the journeys I wish to record. Not the ones I made, but the ones I might have made, or perhaps did make in some other place or time’
Physicist Albert Einstein once wrote ‘the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,’ time being an illusion neuroscientist Abhijit Naskar argues our minds create to ‘aid in our sense of temporal presence.’ As with everything else in the book, Winterson’s approach to time follows Einstein’s assertion that it is an illusion and opens up a fantastic avenue in which the characters in 20th century London both are and aren’t those in the 17th century version. Sexing the Cherry is best when it dips into gorgeously poetic ponderings of time and ourselves as fallible and failing vessels temporarily sailing upon its seas. ‘Where will we go next, when there are no more wildernesses?’ Winterson asks. Time, and inside ourselves in our understanding of it, appears to be the next great voyage.
‘I don’t hate men, I just wish they’d try harder. They all want to be heroes and all we want is for them to stay at home and help with the housework and the kids. That’s not the kind of heroism they enjoy.’
Much of this novel revolves around ideas of adventure and heroism. She observes, however, that due to enforced gender roles this tends to mean men go off on quests while the women are stuck at home raising children. And that women are gatekept from the sort of heroics men are allowed. It is a plea to understand why hierarchies and gender norms are oppressive and pitfalls for society and her depictions of blended gender roles or fluidity are an alternative to these. The idea is that letting go of these false ideas would make society more equal and inclusive without the power structure that gatekeep and oppress. In the present London of the book, we have the counterpart of Dog Woman as a scientist observing the ecological ruin caused by a major corporation and that as a woman and not of the ruling economic class her voice is even less likely to be heard. ‘The earth is being murdered and hardly anybody wants to believe it’ she observes and says that these men in power are not inherently evil but instead corrupted by the flawed ideology normalized into society. In a dream where she invades political offices as Dog Woman, her goal would be to give them all ‘"compulsory training in feminism and ecology.’ This book and its criticisms of men, thereby, are not against men per say (this is not misandry) but against patriarchy and the misogyny that polices its hierarchy (see Dr. Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny for an excellent philosophical analysis of this).
Interestingly, while Winterson is highly positive with her depictions of lesbian characters, the gay men are written very critically (this also occurred in The Passion). The historical time periods for which this stories occupy are part of it, but it is also to zero in on the levels of hierarchy to show how these men still occupy positions of power that they use to hold women, especially queer women, as subservient. The men are able to hide their sexuality behind positions of power, such as in the Church, and then use that role to quite literally burn women at the stake for having “impure” sexualities. I will need to think on this more in further books of hers, but I think that is what she is getting at and it seems to be a further commentary on her main themes (there does seem to be a possible tendency towards fatphobia in her books but I haven’t really examined that enough to comment just yet).
‘The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.’
This is such a fun and fantastic book and I could rave about it for days, but I’ve already taken up so much space and would rather you simply read this book. This just works wonderfully for me and I love her writing and the way she examines her ideas. There is so much more to discuss, such as the character Fortunada, ‘a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt,’ or all the fantastical cityscapes that populate the novel and this book feels infinitely larger than its short length. Winterson is loudly and proudly LGBTQ affirming here and explores interesting themes of gender while subvertin any notions of a concrete reality around us. This book is so zany and I will be thinking of it forever.
4.5/5
March 28, 2018
"People will believe anything. Except, it seems, the truth."
I am in awe of Jeanette Winterson's writing. I don't know how else to put it. After The Passion, I honestly thought I could not be more impressed. But I think "Sexing The Cherry" may be even better. I suspect that her short novels should be read again as soon as you have added another one to your repertoire, because there are recurring themes and (fruity) flavours that are definitely part of Winterson's general narrative.
"Sexing the Cherry" is all about the strange correlation between past, present and future, and the way human beings navigate time and space, physically and in their imagination. It is about the places we really go to and the things we experience in our minds. What is real? What is true? If I see something in my head, does that mean it has happened, even if I just imagine it?
"And I sing of other times, when I was happy, though I know that these are figments of my mind and nowhere I have ever been. But does it matter if the place cannot be mapped as long as I can still describe it?"
"Sexing the Cherry" is a tale of love, crossing borders of time and space, linking people despite all odds. It is a story about freedom and chains, about making choices and exploring the world outside. It is harsh reality and fantastical imagination. It can be interpreted in many ways and I am sure it speaks to every reader in a different way.
I actually happen to know that for a fact, because I had a silent co-reader on the first 31 pages. I bought my copy of the novel second-hand, and in the margins I found comments from the previous owner, and they increasingly drove me up the walls. I don't mind marking books at all. I do it all the time myself, but in this case I found myself in a noisy conversation, where I tried to listen to the author and the characters, while someone else was telling me basic facts.
"Monstrosity!" - Well yeah, it is a giant woman. No secret there?
"Pregnancy!" - Thanks for the clarification, I would never have guessed?
"Gay??" - Do you know ANYTHING about Jeanette Winterson's fiction?
"Cross-dressing!" - A most beautiful reminiscence of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando", another traveller in time and space.
"Religion?" - Well, see note on "Gay?"
And so on. Until the comments stopped abruptly after 31 pages, leaving me to guess whether my co-reader gave up or finally got sucked into the story and stopped wondering about the different topics thrown together in a creative mix.
What really annoyed me was the comment next to the sentence:
"I have seen a banana."
My reading partner underlined the fruit and wrote: "Penis!" Well, yes. And no. One of the amazing things about reading Jeanette Winterson is her magical way of describing reality. She does not hide (homo)sexuality, religion, cross-dressing or brutal violence, so I don't see why it needs to be pointed out all the time. On the other hand, she gives her storylines several layers of meaning, so that the complexity of human desire and exploration is in focus, not a banal equation of word and meaning. The banana in the story is so much more than: x-2=0, therefore x=2. At some point, the banana incident is explained further:
"When I was little, my mother took me to see a great wonder. It was about 1633, I think, and never before had there been a banana in England."
So yes, it is a phallic symbol, and Winterson does not hide that at all, but it is also a symbol for discovering things you didn't know before, things that you have access to because the world has opened up. The book was written in 1989, and for parts of Europe, the banana became a symbol of free access to the world market. Reading Eastern European authors of that era, you inevitably stumble upon bananas sooner or later. I just got mad at the one-dimensional interpretation delivered by the person reading MY copy of this beloved book before me. (But thanks for dumping it in a thrift store, my book budget is constantly strained!)
One more thing (short of typing up the book in its entirety here, I can't give it appropriate credit!) that literally illustrates the multi-faceted story: there are little drawings at the beginning of each section, indicating who is currently telling the story. Bananas and pineapples! It took me a while to register that they are sometimes cut in half, and that they tell a tiny story on the side-lines of the main plot (if there is such a thing). This is an art in itself, which I have seen most exquisitely done in Maggot Moon. And just like in "Maggot Moon", the art and the title make sense, but not straight away, and not without thinking for a while. Won't say more about it!
I would say, Winterson is a queen of her art, and a queen of the human heart. I can't imagine there is a simpler way of showing how people express their love than this beautiful scene of a son leaving his tidy, orderly parents to go to the navy:
"I eat all my peas first and this annoys them."
On that last day, however, when the family can't find words to express the love, and loss, and worry, he reflects:
"I tried to leave my peas till last."
Nothing more needs to be said about the effort we put in to show our love, the symbolic little gestures that are only understandable if you are part of that specific unit of love.
Enough said! Read it if you like complex stories and many meanings, if you love poetry and truth and to travel between different times and places while staying in your reading chair. If you look for literal translation of symbolic language, I guarantee you that you will be successful as well, and find at least twenty translations from metaphor to plain meaning until page 31! If you can tell me what purpose it serves I will complete the exercise for the rest of my copy!
Sorry, sometimes my sarcasm steals the keyboard!
I am in awe of Jeanette Winterson's writing. I don't know how else to put it. After The Passion, I honestly thought I could not be more impressed. But I think "Sexing The Cherry" may be even better. I suspect that her short novels should be read again as soon as you have added another one to your repertoire, because there are recurring themes and (fruity) flavours that are definitely part of Winterson's general narrative.
"Sexing the Cherry" is all about the strange correlation between past, present and future, and the way human beings navigate time and space, physically and in their imagination. It is about the places we really go to and the things we experience in our minds. What is real? What is true? If I see something in my head, does that mean it has happened, even if I just imagine it?
"And I sing of other times, when I was happy, though I know that these are figments of my mind and nowhere I have ever been. But does it matter if the place cannot be mapped as long as I can still describe it?"
"Sexing the Cherry" is a tale of love, crossing borders of time and space, linking people despite all odds. It is a story about freedom and chains, about making choices and exploring the world outside. It is harsh reality and fantastical imagination. It can be interpreted in many ways and I am sure it speaks to every reader in a different way.
I actually happen to know that for a fact, because I had a silent co-reader on the first 31 pages. I bought my copy of the novel second-hand, and in the margins I found comments from the previous owner, and they increasingly drove me up the walls. I don't mind marking books at all. I do it all the time myself, but in this case I found myself in a noisy conversation, where I tried to listen to the author and the characters, while someone else was telling me basic facts.
"Monstrosity!" - Well yeah, it is a giant woman. No secret there?
"Pregnancy!" - Thanks for the clarification, I would never have guessed?
"Gay??" - Do you know ANYTHING about Jeanette Winterson's fiction?
"Cross-dressing!" - A most beautiful reminiscence of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando", another traveller in time and space.
"Religion?" - Well, see note on "Gay?"
And so on. Until the comments stopped abruptly after 31 pages, leaving me to guess whether my co-reader gave up or finally got sucked into the story and stopped wondering about the different topics thrown together in a creative mix.
What really annoyed me was the comment next to the sentence:
"I have seen a banana."
My reading partner underlined the fruit and wrote: "Penis!" Well, yes. And no. One of the amazing things about reading Jeanette Winterson is her magical way of describing reality. She does not hide (homo)sexuality, religion, cross-dressing or brutal violence, so I don't see why it needs to be pointed out all the time. On the other hand, she gives her storylines several layers of meaning, so that the complexity of human desire and exploration is in focus, not a banal equation of word and meaning. The banana in the story is so much more than: x-2=0, therefore x=2. At some point, the banana incident is explained further:
"When I was little, my mother took me to see a great wonder. It was about 1633, I think, and never before had there been a banana in England."
So yes, it is a phallic symbol, and Winterson does not hide that at all, but it is also a symbol for discovering things you didn't know before, things that you have access to because the world has opened up. The book was written in 1989, and for parts of Europe, the banana became a symbol of free access to the world market. Reading Eastern European authors of that era, you inevitably stumble upon bananas sooner or later. I just got mad at the one-dimensional interpretation delivered by the person reading MY copy of this beloved book before me. (But thanks for dumping it in a thrift store, my book budget is constantly strained!)
One more thing (short of typing up the book in its entirety here, I can't give it appropriate credit!) that literally illustrates the multi-faceted story: there are little drawings at the beginning of each section, indicating who is currently telling the story. Bananas and pineapples! It took me a while to register that they are sometimes cut in half, and that they tell a tiny story on the side-lines of the main plot (if there is such a thing). This is an art in itself, which I have seen most exquisitely done in Maggot Moon. And just like in "Maggot Moon", the art and the title make sense, but not straight away, and not without thinking for a while. Won't say more about it!
I would say, Winterson is a queen of her art, and a queen of the human heart. I can't imagine there is a simpler way of showing how people express their love than this beautiful scene of a son leaving his tidy, orderly parents to go to the navy:
"I eat all my peas first and this annoys them."
On that last day, however, when the family can't find words to express the love, and loss, and worry, he reflects:
"I tried to leave my peas till last."
Nothing more needs to be said about the effort we put in to show our love, the symbolic little gestures that are only understandable if you are part of that specific unit of love.
Enough said! Read it if you like complex stories and many meanings, if you love poetry and truth and to travel between different times and places while staying in your reading chair. If you look for literal translation of symbolic language, I guarantee you that you will be successful as well, and find at least twenty translations from metaphor to plain meaning until page 31! If you can tell me what purpose it serves I will complete the exercise for the rest of my copy!
Sorry, sometimes my sarcasm steals the keyboard!
March 14, 2022
Date 15 January 23rd January
Time 19:00 – 20.15
Location : The Box
Excerpt from interview with P Bryant
Detective Munch : Thing is, my literary friend, you got no proof.
PB : Proof?
Det Munch : Anyone can invent an identity and claim to have read like a zillion books and then post up fake reviews. Anyone. I could pay 15 year olds to do it.
PB : Well, so what? That’s the internet for you. Who cares?
Det Pembleton : Who cares? Did you hear that John? Who cares? We care. Let me explain a little. This Goodreads thing, it used to be nothing much, a few book geeks with no social life, who gave a tinker’s damn one way or the other. But now, now’s different.
Det Munch : Now you have like 20 million people on this site. Now it’s big. Now you get mentions in Fortune magazine. You know Fortune? That’s like when rich people notice. Have you heard of rich people? Yeah. When they notice, it’s important.
Det Pembleton : So we see that you reviewed this Jeanette Winterson novel here, er, Sexing The Cherry, and awarded it a whole two stars, I mean, come on buddy, where’s your proof that you even read this damn thing?
PB : It was years ago. There’s no proof. You just have to take my word.
Det Munch : As a man of honour?
PB : Well, er, I probably wouldn’t quite use those words.
Det Munch : Well, let’s see if we can figure this thing out. May I direct your attention to these three mug shots. Take your time. Tell us which one is Jeanette Winterson.
He takes photos of Jeanette Winterson, Sara Waters and Ellen DeGeneres and spreads them on the table.
PB : Er – this doesn’t prove anything.
Det Pembleton : Not in itself. Let’s say it’s an…indicator.
PB stabs blindly at the photo of Ellen DeGeneres.
Det Pembleton : Did you see that, Detective Munch? The interviewee has indicated the photo of Ellen DeGeneres who is an American television personality and not an English novelist.
Det Munch : I did see that, Frank. I take that to be … indicative.
PB : Anyhow, how did I get here? You guys, you’re Baltimore murder cops. I seen you in that show.
Det Munch : We’re on secondment. You’re right, this fake reviewing crime isn’t murder - except in the sense of murdering a writer’s reputation with fake reviews and fake ratings and general fake fakery. You do realise that your fake reviews get Google hits? This is not some nerdy game. This is real life.
PB : The last thing I remember I was at home – I heard a hissing noise… it was a kind of gas… coming through my front door keyhole…and I woke up here. I’ve read about this… this is called extraordinary rendition…
Det Pembleton : Well, could be extraordinary to you, but not to us. Come on, let’s quit the amusing back and forth – did you really read this novel?
PB : Yes! Years ago!
Det Munch : And what did you think of it?
PB : It was weird and phantasmagorical!
Det Munch: Much like her other one The Passion which you also “read” ?
PB: Yes – no – yes. Different. But similar. Oh, I don’t know.
Det Pembleton : John, let’s leave Mr Bryant to think things over for a minute or so.
They leave The Box and join the Goodreads editorial staff who have been observing the interview through the two way mirror.
Det Pembleton : He’ll break. They all do, eventually.
Time 19:00 – 20.15
Location : The Box
Excerpt from interview with P Bryant
Detective Munch : Thing is, my literary friend, you got no proof.
PB : Proof?
Det Munch : Anyone can invent an identity and claim to have read like a zillion books and then post up fake reviews. Anyone. I could pay 15 year olds to do it.
PB : Well, so what? That’s the internet for you. Who cares?
Det Pembleton : Who cares? Did you hear that John? Who cares? We care. Let me explain a little. This Goodreads thing, it used to be nothing much, a few book geeks with no social life, who gave a tinker’s damn one way or the other. But now, now’s different.
Det Munch : Now you have like 20 million people on this site. Now it’s big. Now you get mentions in Fortune magazine. You know Fortune? That’s like when rich people notice. Have you heard of rich people? Yeah. When they notice, it’s important.
Det Pembleton : So we see that you reviewed this Jeanette Winterson novel here, er, Sexing The Cherry, and awarded it a whole two stars, I mean, come on buddy, where’s your proof that you even read this damn thing?
PB : It was years ago. There’s no proof. You just have to take my word.
Det Munch : As a man of honour?
PB : Well, er, I probably wouldn’t quite use those words.
Det Munch : Well, let’s see if we can figure this thing out. May I direct your attention to these three mug shots. Take your time. Tell us which one is Jeanette Winterson.
He takes photos of Jeanette Winterson, Sara Waters and Ellen DeGeneres and spreads them on the table.
PB : Er – this doesn’t prove anything.
Det Pembleton : Not in itself. Let’s say it’s an…indicator.
PB stabs blindly at the photo of Ellen DeGeneres.
Det Pembleton : Did you see that, Detective Munch? The interviewee has indicated the photo of Ellen DeGeneres who is an American television personality and not an English novelist.
Det Munch : I did see that, Frank. I take that to be … indicative.
PB : Anyhow, how did I get here? You guys, you’re Baltimore murder cops. I seen you in that show.
Det Munch : We’re on secondment. You’re right, this fake reviewing crime isn’t murder - except in the sense of murdering a writer’s reputation with fake reviews and fake ratings and general fake fakery. You do realise that your fake reviews get Google hits? This is not some nerdy game. This is real life.
PB : The last thing I remember I was at home – I heard a hissing noise… it was a kind of gas… coming through my front door keyhole…and I woke up here. I’ve read about this… this is called extraordinary rendition…
Det Pembleton : Well, could be extraordinary to you, but not to us. Come on, let’s quit the amusing back and forth – did you really read this novel?
PB : Yes! Years ago!
Det Munch : And what did you think of it?
PB : It was weird and phantasmagorical!
Det Munch: Much like her other one The Passion which you also “read” ?
PB: Yes – no – yes. Different. But similar. Oh, I don’t know.
Det Pembleton : John, let’s leave Mr Bryant to think things over for a minute or so.
They leave The Box and join the Goodreads editorial staff who have been observing the interview through the two way mirror.
Det Pembleton : He’ll break. They all do, eventually.
March 20, 2022
„Iubirea este acea cruzime care ne duce direct la porțile Paradisului, doar ca să ne aducă aminte că ne sînt închise pe vecie” (p.47).
Să zicem că acțiunea acestui roman „istoric” se petrece în timpul Războiului civil din Anglia (1641 - 1660), deși salturile în timp (și spațiu) nu lipsesc. Sfîrșitul se petrece în 1990.
Femeia cu Cîini e o făptură grotescă. Pregătește cîini de luptă și duce o viață marginală și sordidă. Într-o zi, îl culege pe Jordan din apele Tamisei și, în felul ei cvasi-primitiv și înduioșător, se va atașa de băiat. Îl va păzi cu gelozie de pericole. Și, mai ales, îl va învăța să iubească marea... Jordan este inițiat de grădinarul regal, John Tradescant, în botanică și amîndoi vor porni în lungi călătorii peste mări (și țări), pentru a aduce în Anglia plante și fructe exotice. La întoarcere, îi vor uimi pe londonezi arătîndu-le o banană sau un fruct de ananas. Nu este sigur dacă toate călătoriile lui Jordan sînt reale. În partea a doua a cărții, Jordan pare a voiaja mai degrabă în imaginar. Într-o lume virtuală / onirică, le va întîlni pe cele 12 prințese dănțuitoare din basmul fraților Grimm. Fiecare prințesă îi va spune povestea ei. Cam atît despre ceea ce se petrece în roman.
N-am știut pînă la această lectură (deși toată lumea pare să știe chestia asta destul de amuzantă) că puritanii cei mai riguroși, virtuoșii din vremea lui Oliver Cromwell, făceau sex printr-un cearceaf prevăzut cu o gaură. Treaba nu pare întru totul normală, miroase de la o poștă a ipocrizie și sadism: adică noi facem sex, dar să nu cumva să vă gîndiți cu mintea voastră depravată că simțim vreo plăcere, noooo, întîlnirea noastră este în primul rînd un sacrificiu, o jertfă, n-are nici o legătură cu erosul vulgar și imund...
Am cules aceste amănunte din paginile cărții lui Jeanette Winterson. Am găsit secvențe absolut geniale, deși romanul este inabil construit: cuprinde o meditație despre identitate, un fantasy, o poveste de iubire (neîmpărtășită), o cronică istorică etc. Jeanette Winterson a vrut prea mult, dar romanul nu-i rău...
July 25, 2007
Jeannette Winterson is one of my all-time favorite writers and I'm constantly recommending this slim book. For what it lacks in girth, the book makes up for in substance. I have never more furiously scribbled passages down in my journal for future reference.
The story itself is entertaining enough to merit the book worth a read. The premise is reminiscent of a Brother's Grimm fairy tale - you know, back when fairy tales were sort of dark, creepy, and a little scary, before Disney got its hands on them.
But it's Winterson's introspection on love and relationships, their possibilities and their limits, conveyed deftly through her inventive fables, that make me love this book.
The story itself is entertaining enough to merit the book worth a read. The premise is reminiscent of a Brother's Grimm fairy tale - you know, back when fairy tales were sort of dark, creepy, and a little scary, before Disney got its hands on them.
But it's Winterson's introspection on love and relationships, their possibilities and their limits, conveyed deftly through her inventive fables, that make me love this book.
July 13, 2012
Once I stood in a museum looking at a "painting" hanging on the wall. It had all the components of a painting: the canvas, lines and squiggles rendered in pencil, the artist's signature, and some blotches of color here and there. I read the review on the little plaque next to it which described what it was made of, its post-modern symbolism, it's meaning. I didn't see that at all.
Another time I put on a CD to listen to. It had all the components of "music": instruments, notes, pauses, a musician behind the scenes who determined how the people playing the instruments were to perform. I read the review on the back of the CD case which described the musicians, their instruments, its post-modern interpretation and why it was supposed to be musical. I didn't hear that at all.
Today I finished reading a "book". It had all the components of a work of fiction: characters, words, sentences, descriptions of places and ideas and things. I read the blurbs on the back of the book, the reviews here at Goodreads and on Amazon, online on blogs and forums, and even what the author herself said about her post-modern piece of literature. I tried to understand why people liked it, but somehow nobody ever said why, only that they did. Nobody could even tell me what it all meant. They could only describe the component parts. I didn't get it at all.
All of these "beautiful" works of art I just mentioned remind me of a "good" wine. People go on and on about the bouquet, the subtleties, the nuances, and the vast depth of flavor, the slight hints of this and that. At the end of the day, what they're describing is rotten grapes. I kind of feel that way about this book.
Another time I put on a CD to listen to. It had all the components of "music": instruments, notes, pauses, a musician behind the scenes who determined how the people playing the instruments were to perform. I read the review on the back of the CD case which described the musicians, their instruments, its post-modern interpretation and why it was supposed to be musical. I didn't hear that at all.
Today I finished reading a "book". It had all the components of a work of fiction: characters, words, sentences, descriptions of places and ideas and things. I read the blurbs on the back of the book, the reviews here at Goodreads and on Amazon, online on blogs and forums, and even what the author herself said about her post-modern piece of literature. I tried to understand why people liked it, but somehow nobody ever said why, only that they did. Nobody could even tell me what it all meant. They could only describe the component parts. I didn't get it at all.
All of these "beautiful" works of art I just mentioned remind me of a "good" wine. People go on and on about the bouquet, the subtleties, the nuances, and the vast depth of flavor, the slight hints of this and that. At the end of the day, what they're describing is rotten grapes. I kind of feel that way about this book.
November 29, 2020
This book feels more like Winterson's love letter to time, its uncertainties and the almost imperceptible irregularities, to the fickle nature of reality and to the ephemerality of truth. It can even be read as a lengthy ode, and I am completely besotted with it.
At the crux of the book is the idea that the spacetime we inhabit is a lie we tell ourselves, perhaps even a mirage projected by our thirst for a tangible reality. But reality itself is not static, it is a product of intersections between multiple trajectories, and some of these points appear to be more densely concentrated with truth than others. And so the dog woman and Jordan live through multiple ages, through various phatasmagoric landscapes, bearing witness to the erratic looping and unwinding of time.
Winterson clearly believes in imbuing her characters with an agency, a sense of self that can even be separated from the story. This is very evident in her retelling of the tale of the twelve dancing sisters, where each sister practices an autonomy that is unshakeable in its essence.
The events outlined in Sexing The Cherry happen in two different centuries, perhaps even simultaneously. What's significant is the subterfuge of its characters across all lifetimes, their unapologetic resistance to the sedimentary nature of time, and the homage they pay both to their past and future selves (since all of time is just a single point in this book) while making their selfhoods anew.
With its occasional dark humour and witty commentary on love, sex, gender, capitalism, sin and religion, Sexing The Cherry is nothing short of a masterpiece. The writing style also reminded me of one of my favourite poetry collections, The World Doesn't End. Suffice it to say that I am in love with this book.
My experience of time is mostly like my experience with maps. Flat, moving in a more or less straight line from one point to another. Being in time, in a continuous present, is to look at a map and not see the hills, shapes and undulations, but only the flat form. There is no sense of dimension, only a feeling for the surface. Thinking about time is more dizzy and precipitous.
Thinking about time is like turning the globe round and round, recognizing that all journeys exist simultaneously, that to be in one place is not to deny the existence of another, even though that other place cannot be felt or seen, our usual criteria for belief.
At the crux of the book is the idea that the spacetime we inhabit is a lie we tell ourselves, perhaps even a mirage projected by our thirst for a tangible reality. But reality itself is not static, it is a product of intersections between multiple trajectories, and some of these points appear to be more densely concentrated with truth than others. And so the dog woman and Jordan live through multiple ages, through various phatasmagoric landscapes, bearing witness to the erratic looping and unwinding of time.
Winterson clearly believes in imbuing her characters with an agency, a sense of self that can even be separated from the story. This is very evident in her retelling of the tale of the twelve dancing sisters, where each sister practices an autonomy that is unshakeable in its essence.
The events outlined in Sexing The Cherry happen in two different centuries, perhaps even simultaneously. What's significant is the subterfuge of its characters across all lifetimes, their unapologetic resistance to the sedimentary nature of time, and the homage they pay both to their past and future selves (since all of time is just a single point in this book) while making their selfhoods anew.
With its occasional dark humour and witty commentary on love, sex, gender, capitalism, sin and religion, Sexing The Cherry is nothing short of a masterpiece. The writing style also reminded me of one of my favourite poetry collections, The World Doesn't End. Suffice it to say that I am in love with this book.
My experience of time is mostly like my experience with maps. Flat, moving in a more or less straight line from one point to another. Being in time, in a continuous present, is to look at a map and not see the hills, shapes and undulations, but only the flat form. There is no sense of dimension, only a feeling for the surface. Thinking about time is more dizzy and precipitous.
Thinking about time is like turning the globe round and round, recognizing that all journeys exist simultaneously, that to be in one place is not to deny the existence of another, even though that other place cannot be felt or seen, our usual criteria for belief.
February 19, 2022
"I had sex with a man once: in and out. A soundtrack of grunts and a big sigh at the end"
This being the third book I've read by Winterson, I've concluded that she is certainly not the average writer. She's incredibly unique, and there is an oddity in her works. Winterson is definitely an acquired taste, but I've realised she's definitely 'my taste.'
This book is set in England, and the story jumps back and forth in time. During this, we meet various characters. I think the dog woman has to be my favourite. Weaved expertly throughout the story, are other known characters from various fairy tales and myths. Doing this definitely worked, and I think it helped support the main story rather well.
The narration jumps fairly fast to one character to the next, so therefore to understand what's potentially going on, one must pay close attention. I found myself confused at various moments in the book.
The book is all based around love. It involves characters that cannot express the love that is controlling them, and eventually leading down the path of heartbreak.
There is a slightly comical scene nearing the end, where the dog woman recalls when she slept with a man. Based on the fact the dog woman is a fairly large woman, the man complains in great vulgarity, that she is just "too big" downstairs to satisfy him. It's amusing as the dog woman hasn't a clue what he's referring to!
Before I finish this, I must say how much I rate the dog woman. She's certainly a force to be reckoned with, and she's strong, powerful and doesn't give one singular shit about what society make of her. Isn't that how we all should be?
This being the third book I've read by Winterson, I've concluded that she is certainly not the average writer. She's incredibly unique, and there is an oddity in her works. Winterson is definitely an acquired taste, but I've realised she's definitely 'my taste.'
This book is set in England, and the story jumps back and forth in time. During this, we meet various characters. I think the dog woman has to be my favourite. Weaved expertly throughout the story, are other known characters from various fairy tales and myths. Doing this definitely worked, and I think it helped support the main story rather well.
The narration jumps fairly fast to one character to the next, so therefore to understand what's potentially going on, one must pay close attention. I found myself confused at various moments in the book.
The book is all based around love. It involves characters that cannot express the love that is controlling them, and eventually leading down the path of heartbreak.
There is a slightly comical scene nearing the end, where the dog woman recalls when she slept with a man. Based on the fact the dog woman is a fairly large woman, the man complains in great vulgarity, that she is just "too big" downstairs to satisfy him. It's amusing as the dog woman hasn't a clue what he's referring to!
Before I finish this, I must say how much I rate the dog woman. She's certainly a force to be reckoned with, and she's strong, powerful and doesn't give one singular shit about what society make of her. Isn't that how we all should be?
March 22, 2021
An exuberant crazy mess. Winterson is the ringmaster of her own word-circus, so much colour and movement. Loved it.
April 11, 2020
I have lost count of the times I've read this book by now, but I first read it as part of a paper on post-war postmodern British literature, and thought and thought and thought about what the wartime experience of PTSD and reliving trauma opened up for people (writers!) in terms of Time and contemplation [insert nod to Kurt Vonnegut here].
Jeannette Winterson's idea of Time in this book is what truly makes it: Sexing The Cherry is about the way we do (and do not) experience time: as clock or as heartbeat, as day or as dream, as linear or as the air over a pool of water that is past, present and future all at once.
In the simplest of terms, this book is about a pineapple and a banana. Even when it's not, the fruits are a big part of how this book uses them to represent people and slice time. But on another level, it is about how we represent a graft between this world and all the countless others that we may not live but do inhabit, or remember, or instantly recognise.
Set between the reign of Charles I and the present, Sexing The Cherry is a journey through the minds of Jordan; named and fished out of a river; and a woman whom we call the "Dog Woman", his Royalist mother. In this journey, we navigate through time, love, the fairytale, and beyond. This is an immensely funny book, a child of imagination, often literalising metaphors to tell a story: be it the story of words floating in the air, of the hanging of the King, or of Jordan's quest to find Fortunata (who is both the dancer he's looking for and the dancing part of himself). Midway through the book, as time starts to converge, what a reader may experience is a jolt nothing short of magic.
Winterson in this book also concocts a lovely ode to literature and feminism (which for much of history have been at loggerheads, given the male gaze) telling the tales of the Twelve Dancing Princesses from their own mouths, giving them autonomy and a woman's take on Byron, Browning, Coleridge and the Brothers' Grimm. There is also Jordan's cross-dress and space/time travel in a brothel, a beautiful ode to Woolf's Orlando.
I specifically loved the character of the Dog Woman as she is in the 21st century, and how Winterson exhibits through her the rage, body dysmorphia and ecological concern that her 17th century counterpart, the mountain she is, may or may not exhibit or even possess. They are both, in their own ways, trying to save the world (or their world, whichever it is they prefer to inhabit).
I also enjoyed how this book took on the idea of love, be it of self or its extensions in other people. After all, in the end, all of our characters are one, and communication is equally important between the Dog Woman and Jordan as it is between their own selves. Winterson seems almost to affirm that in matters of love, we can never know because we feel.
Perhaps this review is a great injustice to the marvel that Sexing The Cherry is. Despite how different it is to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and of Winterson's other works, I'd say it's the most realist of them all.
I truly, wholly adore this book. I was hooked on to every line on every single page, and all the space between them too.
In many, often paradoxical ways,
Jeannette Winterson's idea of Time in this book is what truly makes it: Sexing The Cherry is about the way we do (and do not) experience time: as clock or as heartbeat, as day or as dream, as linear or as the air over a pool of water that is past, present and future all at once.
In the simplest of terms, this book is about a pineapple and a banana. Even when it's not, the fruits are a big part of how this book uses them to represent people and slice time. But on another level, it is about how we represent a graft between this world and all the countless others that we may not live but do inhabit, or remember, or instantly recognise.
Set between the reign of Charles I and the present, Sexing The Cherry is a journey through the minds of Jordan; named and fished out of a river; and a woman whom we call the "Dog Woman", his Royalist mother. In this journey, we navigate through time, love, the fairytale, and beyond. This is an immensely funny book, a child of imagination, often literalising metaphors to tell a story: be it the story of words floating in the air, of the hanging of the King, or of Jordan's quest to find Fortunata (who is both the dancer he's looking for and the dancing part of himself). Midway through the book, as time starts to converge, what a reader may experience is a jolt nothing short of magic.
Winterson in this book also concocts a lovely ode to literature and feminism (which for much of history have been at loggerheads, given the male gaze) telling the tales of the Twelve Dancing Princesses from their own mouths, giving them autonomy and a woman's take on Byron, Browning, Coleridge and the Brothers' Grimm. There is also Jordan's cross-dress and space/time travel in a brothel, a beautiful ode to Woolf's Orlando.
I specifically loved the character of the Dog Woman as she is in the 21st century, and how Winterson exhibits through her the rage, body dysmorphia and ecological concern that her 17th century counterpart, the mountain she is, may or may not exhibit or even possess. They are both, in their own ways, trying to save the world (or their world, whichever it is they prefer to inhabit).
I also enjoyed how this book took on the idea of love, be it of self or its extensions in other people. After all, in the end, all of our characters are one, and communication is equally important between the Dog Woman and Jordan as it is between their own selves. Winterson seems almost to affirm that in matters of love, we can never know because we feel.
Perhaps this review is a great injustice to the marvel that Sexing The Cherry is. Despite how different it is to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and of Winterson's other works, I'd say it's the most realist of them all.
I truly, wholly adore this book. I was hooked on to every line on every single page, and all the space between them too.
In many, often paradoxical ways,
reading [it] gives you more time than not-reading.
Want to read
October 16, 2023Setting this one aside for now. I love Jeanette Winterson, but I'm not in the mood for something fantastical at the moment.
September 10, 2019
Wonderfully titled and less porny than expected, "Sexting the Cherry" is a brilliant poem-in-prose. It's hilarious; the details are awkward and perfect. The silliness is nicely coated by pathos--something grand is stirring, yet, as Winterson proposes, it is not particularly mentioned.
"Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle."
This oddity could be classified as meta-lit, as alternate history, as a Voltairesque journey into whimsy & poetry. Very nice.
"Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle."
This oddity could be classified as meta-lit, as alternate history, as a Voltairesque journey into whimsy & poetry. Very nice.
February 2, 2017
Winterson kendi yazmış olduğu önsözünde diyor ki; "öykülerin de kendi kendilerini değiştirmek gibi bir özelliği vardır ve okumak özgürlüktür, bir dizi kural değil." Bu vesileyle "katı" cisimlerden oluşmuş dünyaya meydan okuyor kalemiyle. Dünyanın gerçekliğini sorguluyor ve de zaman algımızı, Tanrı'yı ve benlik savaşımızı, egomuzu. Geçmiş zaman, gelecek zaman gibi ayrımlar yapmayan, zamanı tek olarak algılayan ve bizim asla öğrenemeyeceğimiz aslında son derece yalın bir algı düzeyinde yaşayıp, bunu sorgulamayan Hopi'lere nazaran bizim yüzyıllardır hep umutla ve özlemle beklediğimiz geleceğin aslında çöldeki kentler misali biz yaklaştıkça parıltısını kaybedişini, biz uzandıkça boş bir uzamın bir parçası olduklarını idrak edişimizi anlatıyor. Zamanla.
"Vişnenin Cinsiyeti"nin ne hakkında olduğunun hiç bir önemi yok aslında. Önemli olan, farkedilmeden içinden fırlayan hayatlar. Farkedilmeden. Okuyucu bağlamındaysa özgür irademizle, hiç kimsenin tesiri altında kalmadan anlayacağız ki bir çocuk bir kadının kalbini kıracak ve bunu onu sevmesini sağlayarak yapacak. Öte yandan onun kalbine çok talip çıkacak ama kimse kazanamayacak, çünkü o aşkın bir yüreği nasıl etkilediğini öğrenemeyecek. Kalbini vermek isteyeceği tek kişiyse onu reddedecek ve bu çağları kapsayan modern masalda kocalarıyla olamasa da mutluluğu yakalamış on iki prensesin de hikayesi anlatılacak. Zaman, içinde bir ileri bir geri gittiğimiz düşlerimizdeki gibi içimizde hareket ederken, bütün karşılaştıklarımızın bir parçası oldığumuzu, bütün karşılaştıklarımızın da bizim bir parçamız olduğunu anlayacağız. Zamanla.
"Hangi kayadan yontulduğunu, hangi çukurdan çekilip çıkarıldığını hatırla."
Pınar Kür'ün çevirisiyle. Zamanla değil bir anda sevilen bir yazar var karşımızda.
"Vişnenin Cinsiyeti"nin ne hakkında olduğunun hiç bir önemi yok aslında. Önemli olan, farkedilmeden içinden fırlayan hayatlar. Farkedilmeden. Okuyucu bağlamındaysa özgür irademizle, hiç kimsenin tesiri altında kalmadan anlayacağız ki bir çocuk bir kadının kalbini kıracak ve bunu onu sevmesini sağlayarak yapacak. Öte yandan onun kalbine çok talip çıkacak ama kimse kazanamayacak, çünkü o aşkın bir yüreği nasıl etkilediğini öğrenemeyecek. Kalbini vermek isteyeceği tek kişiyse onu reddedecek ve bu çağları kapsayan modern masalda kocalarıyla olamasa da mutluluğu yakalamış on iki prensesin de hikayesi anlatılacak. Zaman, içinde bir ileri bir geri gittiğimiz düşlerimizdeki gibi içimizde hareket ederken, bütün karşılaştıklarımızın bir parçası oldığumuzu, bütün karşılaştıklarımızın da bizim bir parçamız olduğunu anlayacağız. Zamanla.
"Hangi kayadan yontulduğunu, hangi çukurdan çekilip çıkarıldığını hatırla."
Pınar Kür'ün çevirisiyle. Zamanla değil bir anda sevilen bir yazar var karşımızda.
December 20, 2022
So savage! I LOVE Jeanette Winterson, but it is a true reflection of how I felt about the book in 2010. Perhaps I should give it another go? 😂:
Painfully pretentious and drowning in a mess of its failed aspirations, it's always a bad thing when an author becomes too fond of the sound of their own voice. Characters, ideas, feelings, and stories are lost under the weight of what I can only presume is Winterson's creative vanity. While arguably intelligent she lacks the poetic ability required to pull off a style like this, using language which distracts and detracts from the world she is struggling to present. A wonderful imagination is compromised by trying far too hard to be lyrically interesting, leaving its subjects as crude and sloppy afterthoughts to the writer's aspirations. A great shame, because there would otherwise be a lot here to like; curious and observant visions wrapped in a fantasy motif. Sadly, it is a book that systematically fails on just about every level.
Painfully pretentious and drowning in a mess of its failed aspirations, it's always a bad thing when an author becomes too fond of the sound of their own voice. Characters, ideas, feelings, and stories are lost under the weight of what I can only presume is Winterson's creative vanity. While arguably intelligent she lacks the poetic ability required to pull off a style like this, using language which distracts and detracts from the world she is struggling to present. A wonderful imagination is compromised by trying far too hard to be lyrically interesting, leaving its subjects as crude and sloppy afterthoughts to the writer's aspirations. A great shame, because there would otherwise be a lot here to like; curious and observant visions wrapped in a fantasy motif. Sadly, it is a book that systematically fails on just about every level.
February 20, 2008
Sometimes I think I would like to write a letter of thanks to Jeanette Winterson. The letter would go something like this, "Thank you, Ms. Winterson, for being so magical. Thank you for holding on to the play of childhood and mingling it with a breadth of creative intelligence I never knew existed. Thank you for reading as much as you do and for deploying history in new and invigorating ways. Thank you for playing with your narratives, changing your characters into hyperboles of their human selves, and ducking back into reality with the seamlessness of silk. Thank you for writing. Please write more. I'll read every word."
May 26, 2016
A very rewarding reading experience!
My favorite quote:
“The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.”
My favorite quote:
“The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.”
June 15, 2017
Kitaba büyük merak ve beklenti ile başlasam da birkaç sayfa sonra beklentimin boşa olduğunu anladım. Bir kere biçim ve içerik konusunda, dilin kullanımı (belki çeviriden de kaynaklıdır bilemiyorum) konusunda bence ciddi sıkıntılar var.
Masallları, fantastik olayları hikayeye yedirmek göründüğü kadar kolay bir meziyet değil sanırım. Çünkü yazar bunu başaramadığı takdirde karmakarışık bir anlatı çıkıyor ortaya. Gerçi burada yazarın yapmak istediği de biraz bu aslında yani biraz karmaşa yaratmak ama bundan keyif alan okuyucular için zevkli bir okuma sunuyor.
Bense sanırım bu tarz anlatımı pek sevemediğimden keyif alamadım. Benim için çok tekdüze bir ritmi vardı.Metnin kurgusu örgüsü anlatımı bana keyif vermedi.
Masallları, fantastik olayları hikayeye yedirmek göründüğü kadar kolay bir meziyet değil sanırım. Çünkü yazar bunu başaramadığı takdirde karmakarışık bir anlatı çıkıyor ortaya. Gerçi burada yazarın yapmak istediği de biraz bu aslında yani biraz karmaşa yaratmak ama bundan keyif alan okuyucular için zevkli bir okuma sunuyor.
Bense sanırım bu tarz anlatımı pek sevemediğimden keyif alamadım. Benim için çok tekdüze bir ritmi vardı.Metnin kurgusu örgüsü anlatımı bana keyif vermedi.
December 6, 2016
Elimden dusurmeden okudum. Ozellikle Ingiliz kulturunu ve tarihini birazcik taniyorsaniz keyifle okuyabileceginiz ilginc ve surukleyici bir kitap.
January 29, 2023
My first book by jeanette winterson and i was fascinated by it.
Her style of writting reminds me of a mix between master and margarita and a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole. With a huge added slice of winterson randomness that completely and utterly makes sence.
The story is one of a kind. The way it is amusing, dark and at times a little vulgar all add to the mesmerising stories that she has created from historical events or her own life experiences.
I haven't looked properly into this writter yet but from reading this it seems she has had a confusing upbringing, as little snippets of story mention one way or another.
Her theme of love, understanding and ultimately the need or want for release and freedom is so positive at times its gripping.
The wonder that is winterson. Im very much looking forward to reading more of her work!
Her style of writting reminds me of a mix between master and margarita and a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole. With a huge added slice of winterson randomness that completely and utterly makes sence.
The story is one of a kind. The way it is amusing, dark and at times a little vulgar all add to the mesmerising stories that she has created from historical events or her own life experiences.
I haven't looked properly into this writter yet but from reading this it seems she has had a confusing upbringing, as little snippets of story mention one way or another.
Her theme of love, understanding and ultimately the need or want for release and freedom is so positive at times its gripping.
The wonder that is winterson. Im very much looking forward to reading more of her work!
October 8, 2021
Been wating to read this book for years and finally did it. I've really enjoyed other books by Jeanette Winterson and this was no different. Really enjoyed the writing, the plot and characters
May 22, 2020
This one went straight over my head.
February 22, 2023
Jeannette Winterson's poetic-prose is like a drug to me. I obsess about her sentences like a junkie. Her images and words find me at the oddest times; sometimes they call to me. They set up camp in my head and never leave. They speak me. They speak what I long to be. They speak what I fear being. I push them around in my mouth just to feel them form, again and again.
This book is something of a loose mixture of historical fiction, sci-fi time-travel lit, brutal Brothers-Grimm style fairy tale, and classic ghost story -- with a meaty dose of feminist perspective thrown in for good measure. For those with a dark sense of humor, there's plenty to be had here as well. And, deep in the heart of it all, Sexing the Cherry is really meta-fiction: It's a story about storytelling.
I am totally enchanted by the Dog-Woman character. She is larger than life in so many ways.
The title actually has to do more with the propagation of fruit plants through grafting than what you might have originally thought. However, it does have some vivid sexual scenes (very few, if any, of them appealing in a "highlight the good bits and pass it around among your friends" sort of way). But even when she's making you cringe and recoil, Winterson is masterful.
This is a great book for those who enjoy a warped journey, for those who aren't sticklers for linear story-telling and singular narrative voices. It's a great book for those who like a bit of a literary romp that ignores convention and defies expectation.
I wouldn't read this book if you tend have prudish sensibilities when it comes to language and imagery, or if you like tidy "Point A-to-Point B" story-telling. You're not likely to enjoy it. I, however, loved it.
This book is something of a loose mixture of historical fiction, sci-fi time-travel lit, brutal Brothers-Grimm style fairy tale, and classic ghost story -- with a meaty dose of feminist perspective thrown in for good measure. For those with a dark sense of humor, there's plenty to be had here as well. And, deep in the heart of it all, Sexing the Cherry is really meta-fiction: It's a story about storytelling.
I am totally enchanted by the Dog-Woman character. She is larger than life in so many ways.
The title actually has to do more with the propagation of fruit plants through grafting than what you might have originally thought. However, it does have some vivid sexual scenes (very few, if any, of them appealing in a "highlight the good bits and pass it around among your friends" sort of way). But even when she's making you cringe and recoil, Winterson is masterful.
This is a great book for those who enjoy a warped journey, for those who aren't sticklers for linear story-telling and singular narrative voices. It's a great book for those who like a bit of a literary romp that ignores convention and defies expectation.
I wouldn't read this book if you tend have prudish sensibilities when it comes to language and imagery, or if you like tidy "Point A-to-Point B" story-telling. You're not likely to enjoy it. I, however, loved it.
August 28, 2014
I...I don't know what just happened. I think I need to go reread some parts of this book, or at least think it over again because I am so darn confused.
But as for what I did understand, there are parts of this book that are bewitching, and then there are parts that drag so much it is as if there is no life in them.
This was a vintage twin set, basically I got the book for free along with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The set is called Vintage Monsters. So I guess I'll spend tonight thinking about all these confusing parts, and just how this is a monster book that connects to Frankenstein.
So having thought about this, I realize that the Dog Woman is considered a monster, because she's ugly, and huge, and kills people. She never really terrified me, so I guess I didn't pick up on that immediately. Frankenstein and Sexing the Cherry both have monsters who maybe only be monsters because they have been alienated, and hated because they are so different. Society shuns them, can't accept them, and the anger and pain build up. Deep behind all this anger and pain, are two rather loving creatures, lost in thought.
But as for what I did understand, there are parts of this book that are bewitching, and then there are parts that drag so much it is as if there is no life in them.
This was a vintage twin set, basically I got the book for free along with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The set is called Vintage Monsters. So I guess I'll spend tonight thinking about all these confusing parts, and just how this is a monster book that connects to Frankenstein.
So having thought about this, I realize that the Dog Woman is considered a monster, because she's ugly, and huge, and kills people. She never really terrified me, so I guess I didn't pick up on that immediately. Frankenstein and Sexing the Cherry both have monsters who maybe only be monsters because they have been alienated, and hated because they are so different. Society shuns them, can't accept them, and the anger and pain build up. Deep behind all this anger and pain, are two rather loving creatures, lost in thought.
December 18, 2019
I have to be honest, for large portions of this book I had absolutely NO clue what was going on! There is a distinctly Rabelaisian flavour to it, I don’t know who else might have studied Pantagruel at uni or school as I did, but that gives you an idea of the sort of bawdy humour that permeates these pages! I was actually laughing at certain passages, and then others had me cringing.
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Winterson’s mind races from one thing to the next, jolting us from a brutal double murder of two puritans in a brothel to a philosophical musing on the linearity of time and the scope of the universe. I don’t think I could quite keep up! There are some lofty ideas here about whether the past and present actually exist, so if that is your bag you may be interested in picking this one up!
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Some of my favourite parts were the interwoven fairytale-esque parts and random lists which deviated from the narrative somewhat but were nonetheless thought-provoking, such as the rules for being a woman and the tales of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. I loved these, they were all married off to twelve princes and yet found their way back to one another in some dark, disturbing and heartbreaking ways, from the one who poisoned her greedy husband to the one who was vilified and maimed when it turned out the man she had married was a woman.
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But I think the best parts were the passages which felt like they were written TODAY. This book was first published in 1989 and yet we have lines like ‘the earth is being murdered and hardly anyone wants to believe it’, or how about ‘People will believe anything. Except, it seems, the truth’.
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So while I may have been confused a lot of the time, there are flashes of brilliance in here that make all the confusion and excess of bodily fluids worth it! Proceed with caution.
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Winterson’s mind races from one thing to the next, jolting us from a brutal double murder of two puritans in a brothel to a philosophical musing on the linearity of time and the scope of the universe. I don’t think I could quite keep up! There are some lofty ideas here about whether the past and present actually exist, so if that is your bag you may be interested in picking this one up!
.
Some of my favourite parts were the interwoven fairytale-esque parts and random lists which deviated from the narrative somewhat but were nonetheless thought-provoking, such as the rules for being a woman and the tales of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. I loved these, they were all married off to twelve princes and yet found their way back to one another in some dark, disturbing and heartbreaking ways, from the one who poisoned her greedy husband to the one who was vilified and maimed when it turned out the man she had married was a woman.
.
But I think the best parts were the passages which felt like they were written TODAY. This book was first published in 1989 and yet we have lines like ‘the earth is being murdered and hardly anyone wants to believe it’, or how about ‘People will believe anything. Except, it seems, the truth’.
.
So while I may have been confused a lot of the time, there are flashes of brilliance in here that make all the confusion and excess of bodily fluids worth it! Proceed with caution.
June 5, 2010
The juxtaposition of the stories of the giant woman living on the banks of the Thames with her dogs and her adopted son who is drawn to exploring the world in the mid 1600s was interesting. The incorporation of the stories of women who although kept by men for their pleasure are still able to lead lives of their own and escape were interesting asides as was the story of the 12 dancing princesses. The drawings of the banana and the pineapple at the top of the paragraph when the narrator changed was overly cute but OK. However, the book fell apart for me when the giantess moved on into violence against the Puritans and a modern story about a young man who goes to sea and a female chemist who is testing water for contamination.
What exactly is it that I did not like? Too much for too short a book. too many loose connections -- like the fact that Jordan, the male narrator, may have wings he has never used. An attempt at fantasy and fabulism that is not quite good enough to measure up to the work of someone like Angela Carter or an attempt to show as the narrative of the book falls apart that so is our world, something done more skillfully by John Barth. I can't quite put my finger on it, but overall not a particularly satisfying book.
What exactly is it that I did not like? Too much for too short a book. too many loose connections -- like the fact that Jordan, the male narrator, may have wings he has never used. An attempt at fantasy and fabulism that is not quite good enough to measure up to the work of someone like Angela Carter or an attempt to show as the narrative of the book falls apart that so is our world, something done more skillfully by John Barth. I can't quite put my finger on it, but overall not a particularly satisfying book.
August 1, 2007
possibly my absolute favorite book of all time. I want jeanette winterson to read me a bedtime story every night. I didn't know how much I could worship an author before I read this. It's short but potent, and thoroughly infused with her wit. Please please read it, it's wonderful.
April 26, 2019
Beklentilerimin çok ama çok üzerinde çıkarak uzun zamandır beni şaşırtabilen nadir kitaplardan birisi oldu. Tam anlamıyla tadı damağımda kaldı. Yalan , gerçek , tarih , safsata , hayal gücü hepsi kitabın içerisinde. Masal olduğu kadar da gerçek aynı zamanda. İç içe geçmiş bu kadar güzel saçmalığı ben bir arada görmedim. Kitabın adı ne kadar garip bir güzellikte olacağının işaretini veriyordu halbuki.
Reenkarnosyon durumu çok güzel bir şekilde iliştirilmiş öyküye. Kitaba dair en sevdiğim nokta insanların ruhlarının çok ilerleyen yıllarda tekrar karşılaşması ve ruhun günün olaylarına göre yeni bir karaktere bürünüp yeni bir bedende hayat bulmasıdır.
Ayrıca hikayenin akışı , bağlantılar, içerisindeki efsaneler apayrı güzellikteydi. Tim Burton filmi izler gibi hayranlık uyandırıyor kitap içerisindeki karakterler ve hikayeler. Metaforlar , içeriğindeki mesajlar hangi birine değineyim bilmiyorum. Aklınızdaki kitaplardan biriyse , vakit kaybetmeden okuyun derim.
Büyülü gerçekçilik akımı tarzında okuduğum en iyi örneklerden biri oldu. Jeanette fazlasıyla merak uyandıran bir yazar oldu artık benim için.
Reenkarnosyon durumu çok güzel bir şekilde iliştirilmiş öyküye. Kitaba dair en sevdiğim nokta insanların ruhlarının çok ilerleyen yıllarda tekrar karşılaşması ve ruhun günün olaylarına göre yeni bir karaktere bürünüp yeni bir bedende hayat bulmasıdır.
Ayrıca hikayenin akışı , bağlantılar, içerisindeki efsaneler apayrı güzellikteydi. Tim Burton filmi izler gibi hayranlık uyandırıyor kitap içerisindeki karakterler ve hikayeler. Metaforlar , içeriğindeki mesajlar hangi birine değineyim bilmiyorum. Aklınızdaki kitaplardan biriyse , vakit kaybetmeden okuyun derim.
Büyülü gerçekçilik akımı tarzında okuduğum en iyi örneklerden biri oldu. Jeanette fazlasıyla merak uyandıran bir yazar oldu artık benim için.
March 16, 2023
sometimes i'm like jeanette winterson what are you talking about and then she's like "he had a face that made me glad" and "there was talk of witchcraft, but what is stronger than love" and "i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated" and i'm like ah. excellent
August 1, 2015
yazar hanım baya muazzam iş çıkarmış. kitap boyu gerçeği bükmüş arada da felsefi sorular sormuş. değişik bir deneyim oldu benim açımdan.
April 16, 2022
"Çünkü herkes aşka yatkındır. Uyandırmak kolaydır ama, kendi kendine sona ermedikçe yok etmek imkansızdır."
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