Art & Lies [Paperback]

Jeanette Winterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 1996

One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. "A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying."--Newsday.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set on a train traveling through a dystopian future England, Winterson's latest novel is a patchwork meditation on identity and artistry.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Handel is a failed priest but abiding Catholic with elitist tendencies whose work as a doctor forces him to consider social questions that he would probably rather avoid. Picasso, as she calls herself, is a young artist who has been sexually abused by her brother but whose family thinks she is at fault for her dark moods. Sappho is, indeed, Sappho, the lesbian poet of ancient Greece, who here proclaims herself a sensualist and then proceeds to dissect "the union of language and lust." The three converge in a place that may be England in a not-too-distant future made ugly by pollution and even uglier by greed. This is not a novel but an extended rift on art, sex, religion, social repression, the dangers of patriarchy, and everything that is wrong with the contemporary drift to the right. As such, it will be hard going for most readers, but those with some patience will discover exceptionally evocative writing and a vivifying review of some much-discussed contemporary issues. Here, Winterson is even more unmoored than in her spectacular if discursive Written on the Body (LJ 2/15/93); what will she do next? For literary collections.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (February 20, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679762701
• ISBN-13: 978-0679762706
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #500,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is my Bible, December 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Art & Lies (Paperback)

I've read all of Jeanette's books, including her two screenplays, her book of essays, her comic book, and collection of short stories. Art & Lies remains my favourite of all time. Rich with layers, and exceedingly profound, this book changed my life. It's her most difficult one (which is why some people hate it), but the most rewarding. Read it several times and it will only get better.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Anti-Cautionary Note, December 31, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Omaha, NE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art & Lies (Paperback)

I have read with interest other readers' reviews of "Art & Lies," and must respond to one posted on January 24, '97, by "a reader." This reader was gave four stars, questioning Winterson's lack of a strong narrative structure. Anyone interested in Winterson's ideas of the importance of plot should refer to "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" and "Art [Objects]," her collection of essays. To over-simplify, her allegiance is given not to events but to the creative collaboration between author and reader, and therefore her focus is on evocative language. Narrative is, to her, only a jumping-off point for an imaginative process. A tension she exploits and expresses far better than I is that between the dry precision of a word's dictionary meaning and its power to evoke a multitude of images, emotions, analyses and other responses-- responses based both upon individuals' subjective points of view and their more general educational context. I believe it was Pope who said that poetry was "the right words in the right order." He didn't say anything about exposition, complication, or denouement. For those who would prefer the comfort of labels, then, she should perhaps be placed more on the side of the poet than the novelist as we understand the roles, for which placement she has actually stated a preference. I understand this reader's desire for more of a plot to help hold his attention when the admittedly heavy lyricism drowns him: but I must express my own view that the brief periods of standard narrative make up small oases that let us examine the lyricism with greater interest, due to the contrast. I would compare the structure to parts of Thomas Pynchon's "V," in which scenes of everyday, simple human emotion and/or tedium are contrasted with segments of such appalling nihilism, savagery, global corruption and moral decay that one wonders how he could stand to write them. In appreciating the one, a reader is [or can be] led to more thoroughly delve into the other. I might be tempted to relieve "Art & Lies" of one of its full five stars too, because of how hard I find it to get through a lot of Sappho's chapters, even having read it six or seven times. However, Handel's confession scene is so heart-rending that I choose to take on faith connections I may not get yet. Each time I reread the work something new strikes me, and my previous judgments blur together into one new form. I think Winterson's aim is to blur format and structure in favor of content, to unmoor us from the security of knowing what to expect from a book, to throw us mercilessly into something to which we must bend our utmost attention. She wants us engaged, active, on our toes. I'll figure out what to make of Sappho if I keep thinking about it, and so I must give this five stars; if only because I first read it two years ago and haven't finished thinking about it. Feel free to e-mail me, especially if you have Sappho insights!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ... Into Something Rich & Strange, February 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Art & Lies (Paperback)

As the subtitle suggests, this novel hinges on a metaphor of four-part musical harmony. Like music, it does not need to be "about" anything. (If you need a complex and sophisticated plot to hold your interest, this book is not for you.) Each character has a story, no doubt, but what matters is what emotions their lives evoke. Winterson uses her considerable command of metaphor, history, symbolism, and all things bizarre to portray the emotional lives of three very different characters. This is as it should be, for detailed accounts of their lives would ruin the book. It would instead be just the sad and rather ordinary story of a madwoman, a lonely old doctor, and a sleepless poet. Instead, Winterson has used key events of her characters' lives as a framework on which to craft something rich and strange.