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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fiction for the Serious Reader, June 23, 1999
By A Customer
If you have ever had any doubts, "Gut Symmetries" is proof that Wintersen's fiction demands an educated, intelligent reader who is serious about reading. Call me a snob if you will, but I have no sympathy for anyone who thinks this book is too hard to read or doesn't get the story. This isn't a book that a reader can race through, discarding lyric passages and descriptions wily-nily, picking out the events in chronological order, and hurrying to finish. In many ways the metaphor is the message. If you want basic "plot" handed to you on a platter, then this book will probably not agree with you. This plot is not constructed in the run-of-the-mill, straightforward, linear plot structure that we have come to expect from television, movies, and mainstream fiction. It does not pander to the modern sense of impatience. Instead, the telling of the story relies on three different narrators, and the story is told using a non-linear episodic plot structure. Like Wintersen's other books, notably "Sexing the Cherry," the reader must rely on subtle clues to connect the pieces of the story together. As for content, I got so involved in the story that I actually yelled at one of the characters when the "plot twist" (mentioned in the prior reviews) arose. (As well as at two other passages, at least.) Ah but again, perhaps with an eye towards metaphor the message changes... Reading this book takes a little more effort than the average paperback. You've got to engage your mind (and perhaps, at times, your dictionary) to stay on top of it. In my opinion, it's well worth the read--a fine addition to any modern fiction library.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a very tricky one-trick pony, August 13, 1997
jeanette winterson is my favorite writer; i'll tell you that right off. also i am all geeky for physics too, and was glad to see such obvious allusions to physical theory, even when she wasn't pedantically paraphrasing newton or einstein. she did her research, like always, which makes her seem so, i don't know... reliable perhaps?
but, it seems that the language of jeanette, which has always been the feathers in her wings, has gotten sort of old. in _written on the body_, i found myself craving the lyrical passages, waiting eagerly for them and reading them over and over. in _gut symmetries_, they just made me tired. i didn't think any of the characters were conveyed with passion, and i didn't find any of the moving, uplifting, soul-wrenching epiphanies i would expect from her. i re-read passages only to remember who she was writing about, because each was so like the next. in this novel, more than the others i would say, jeanette gives us a conventional plot line, with your standard climax and surprising plot twists. the plot twist sure did surprise me, but it also struck me as crass, like when someone flips on a spotlight in your room at 3am, pitching you violently out of your dreams. still, she's better than most. and still, maybe her heart flies in skies i wish for but do not occupy. but i wonder if she doesn't need to check out what's over the mountains because it seems we've seen this sky, tasted this wind, and wouldn't mind a new trick or two.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The quantum uncertainties of love and life, December 9, 2003
This review is from: Gut Symmetries (Paperback)
The title of Winterson's novel is a triple pun, referring to the twin themes of animal instinct and modern physics (Grand Unified Theory), and--in a bizarre plot twist--human innards. Most of the narrative is presented from the perspectives of two women: Stella, a poet married to a Princeton physicist, and Alice, a younger physicist who has an affair first with Stella's husband and then with Stella herself. Presented nonlinearly, it's one of Winterson's more challenging novels, a scrapbook weaving scientific metaphors and cabalistic mysticism with the tangled associations of three generations of three different families. "I know I am a fool, trying to make connections out of scraps. . . . Am I vain enough to assume you will understand me? No. So I go on puzzling over new joints for words, hoping that this time, one piece will slide smooth against the next." Still, a thematically satisfying, often surprising plot emerges from the accumulated snippets of poetry, witticism, and musing. Even though the book's focus is certainly not its plot, all the bits and pieces eventually tie together in satisfying and unexpected ways. If the novel has a shortcoming, it would be the sacrifice of characterization for thematic unity and postmodern cleverness. It's difficult at times to distinguish the two women (surprising in a novel by Winterson) and their family histories, and one is often forced to seek textual clues in order to determine whether the present narrator is the Jewish poet or the British scientist. Occasionally, however, emotions (and especially humor) surface above the ponderous rumination--for example, the "gut"-wrenching chapter in which Stella finds out about her husband's affair and conducts a physics experiment as conceived by an enraged poet: "If I drop a CD player and a lap top out of the same window at the same time which one will hit the ground first?" "Gut Symmetries" rewards the persistent reader with memorable passages on love and physics, guilt and energy, poetry and mysticism. It's a novel many will want to reread for the Wildean wordplay and the Joycean artistry.
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