Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit [Paperback]

Jeanette Winterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 20, 1997

Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God’s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Raised by an oppressively evangelical mother, Jeanette grows up a good little Christian soldier, even going so far as to stitch samplers whose apocalyptic themes terrify her classmates. As she dryly notes, without self-pity or smugness, "This tendency towards the exotic has brought me many problems, just as it did for William Blake." Jeanette would have remained in the fold but for her unconventional desires; though she can reconcile her love of women with her love of God, the church cannot. It could have been a grim tale, but this first novelwinner of England's Whitbread Prizeis in fact a wry and tender telling of a young girl's triumphantly coming into her own. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"A striking, quirky, delicate, and intricate work . . . Winterson has mastered both comedy and tragedy in this rich little novel. . . . Winterson's great gift is evident." —The Washington Post Book World

"A daring, unconventional comic novel . . . by employing quirky anecdotes, which are told with romping humor, and by splicing various parables into the narrative, Winterson allows herself the dangerous luxury of writing a novel that refuses to rely on rousing plot devices. . . . A fascinating debut . . . A penetrating novel." —Chicago Tribune

"If Flannery O'Connor and Rita Mae Brown had collaborated on the coming-out story of a young British girl in the 1960s, maybe they would have approached the quirky and subtle hilarity of Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical first novel. . . . Winterson's voice, with its idiosyncratic wit and sensitivity, is one you've never heard before." —Ms.

"The overwhelming impression of her work is one of remarkable self-confidence, and she evidently thrives on risk…. As good as Poe: it dares you to laugh and stares you down." —The New York Review of Books

"An explosively imaginative writer." —The London Free Press

"She is a master of her material, a writer [of] great talent." —Muriel Spark

"Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language." —Evening Standard

"The most interesting writer I have read in twenty years." —Gore Vidal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (August 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802135161
• ISBN-13: 978-0802135162
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

185 of 202 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most beautiful, poetic books in existence! December 4, 1999

By Edmund Lau Kok Ming

Format:Paperback

Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiographical novel is one of the most beautifully written story of a middle-class girl struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, creativity, passion vs. her family/society's inflexible "formed opinions". The story of the persecution of a girl because of her sexual preference (in this case, lesbianism) is not new. It's how Ms. Winterson presents her story. Fresh. Alive. Witty. Funny. Heartbreaking at times. Imaginative. Almost like you were holding a piece of someone's soul in your hands rather than merely a book. I noticed that one reviewer mentioned that the book's sexual nature is vulgar. I do not find this so. Even if it is, so what? Life is vulgar. Only those fond of sweeping the dirt under the carpet so that it stays out of sight (or those who drive lesbian girls from their house/church and pretend they don't exist) will disagree with the innate vulgarity of all life. This book is the antidote for that kind of sanitized thinking. This book exposes that sanitized Christian middle-class thinking is weird, almost alien when observed sanely by a third party standing on the outside. This book celebrates life. Read it.

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Evangelical Christianity meets its match February 7, 1998

By Eileen Galen

Format:Paperback

Published in England in 1985, this first novel (autobiography?) is a story of a girl adopted as a baby into an evangelical Christian family in the Midlands, and raised with good humor and matter-of-fact, everyday, unquestioned love ("I cannot recall a time when I did not know that I was special"), strict religious teachings, a lot of structure, strong opinions coming from all corners. As a child, she's proud of her eccentric, high-achieving mom; she's her best student, too. The household and small community is a bubbling stew of English coziness, friends and neighbors, superstition, religious fervor and misinformation, vulgarity, harsh pronouncements and oddly good-natured fanatical beliefs.

The girl soaks it up -- to a point. Things begin to come apart, inevitably, and later still, as a teen, there's the narrator's growing knowledge that she is passionately, yearningly, and quite happily in love with a girl her age named Katy -- and no amount of exorcism will change that. The affair proceeds. Winterson is smart enough to put it all together with grace and humor. Her bright and resourceful protagonist travels a great and difficult path, avoiding all the predictable plot formulas. No whining or self-pity, either.

There is incisive wit, a smart and brave presentation of the (sometimes appalling) facts; very good use of myth, history and politics, fairy tales, Bible and church miscellany; amazing observation. This is a detailed and often funny picture of a truly strange household, a great girl, and there's a lot of love -- in this wonderful novel.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars The satire bites, but the emotions remain detached June 4, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

This story of a young girl discovering her homosexuality within the oppressive confines of a strict Pentecostal society left me with mixed feelings. I felt that Winterson exposed the hypocrisies inherent in the Church's "love the sinner, loathe the deed" mentality (as well as many other attitudes) with an extremely sharp sense of satire - a real strength of the novel. She also brings many of these revelations across with a gentle humour which intensifies their irony as it brightens the novel. However, I felt that the depiction of the central character's "coming out" was somewhat detached and passionless. I also found Winterson's juxtaposition of fantastic "King Arthur"-style episodes with the main narrative to be somewhat crude; they could have been woven in with more fluidity and made their parallels with the story more apparent.

As a criticism of the Church's often hypocritical views on love and sexuality, this novel was bitingly effective. But as a really human story of a young woman discovering with her sexuality, it was curiously unemotive.