Customer Reviews

Sexing the Cherry

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

One of the first things that struck me about this book is how it was so similar to Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando'. Both books are based on the premise that time is flexible, rather than a linear progression, and both combine fantastical elements with historical fiction. They even both use the Thames as an allegory for main themes. Whether this similarity will put off other readers, I don't know, but I felt that it did not detract from the merit of 'Sexing the Cherry'.

This is foremostly a grown-ups fairy tale - there are dancing princesses, a giant woman, magic, towns dying of love. Set (mainly) in England at the time of Cromwell, the tale is told in alternating sections by Dog-Woman (the giant woman) and Jordan. Dog Woman, who is a loner living with her many dogs, discovered Jordan as a child on the bank of the Thames. They have some amazing experiences, though this is what you would expect to happen to such an amazing woman. This is a grown-up's fairy tale in that there is a lot of sex and violence (this book is not for the squemish!) Winterson explores some very 'heavy' topics, such as the construction of identity and reality, and the realities of time. However, this doesn't read as a deep book - it is beautifully written in places, and could be enjoyed for the prose alone.

There are modern day characters included in this story, and I didn't feel that this worked as well as the historical characters. However, this is a very good book. It is not particulary long, so even if you don't enjoy it, at least you haven't wasted your time wading through a thick tome! I would definately suggest that anyone interested gives it a go.

It's been a few months since I read this book, but I want to comment on it and correct a few earlier comments made by others. The setting is neither medieval nor Elizabethan; it is the Cromwellian and Restoration periods of the mid-17th century in England, if indeed it is anywhere concrete at all. The story's hero, Jordan, weaves in and out of time and myth, encountering the wonders of the new world and the Twelve Dancing Princesses of the fairytale (each of whom have the opportunity to describe their failed marriages, some in surprisingly - suspiciously - modern ways). His foster-mother, The Dog Woman, is an astounding creation. Winterson manages to whimsically weave all these threads together; however, this book doesn't *quite* rate a 10. Most readers will be a bit bewildered by the time-travel near then end, and one certainly smells a Woolf in retrospect, but the trip is so much well-crafted and linguistically compelling fun that they shouldn't mind. One does not, after all, ask a magician how they do t

"Thinking about time is to acknowledge two contradictory certainties: that our outward lives are governed by the seasons and the clock; that our inward lives are governed by something much less regular -- an imaginative impulse cutting through the dictates of daily time, and leaving us free to ignore the boundaries of here and now and pass like lightning along the coil of our time, that is, the circle of the universe and whatever it does or does not contain." -Jane Winterson

This work is an exploration of fantasy and reality -- and of which may be which. Starting out at a certain point in time, veering backwards and forwards from that point, and all along the way, sampling little vignettes about the situation at that point and of how fantasies might come to bear. What a magical journey of discovery there is in this wonderfully written work. What sparkling characters there are inside, with multi-faceted dimensions to each one. What a thought-provoking odyssey this book is, and what a fresh way to present these travels.

This author is exquisitely talented, and is eminently capable of producing wonderfully beautiful prose. Reading her words is a joy in and of itself. Her settings are bold, her characters are compelling, and she does not fill either her pages or her plots with minutia. This work is very much like an opera -- breathtakingly beautiful arias abound, strung together with plot-enhancing threads which glitter and glimmer. Take the journey, and savor it -- and think about the inherent themes and concepts. Highly recommended!

Winterson has already stunned the readers with the blend of her power of imagination and lesbian narrative in the first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (winner of Whitebread Prize for the best first fiction). In Sexing the Cherry, she extends her talent and keeps giving the readers surprises. The beginning of the novel is set in the early seventeenth century with two major characters: Jordan, a young man in Renaissance England, and the Dog Woman, who is gigantic in size and adopts Jordan in the way Mosses is in Bible. With the author's fantasy, the closure of the novel brings the readers to the late twentieth century. Winterson uses less than two hundred pages of words to tell an amazing story which lasts for over three hundred years.

The book is about different kinds of timeless loves including the passion between a woman and an adopted son, the hidden gay desire between Tradescant and Jordan, the elusive but beautiful heterosexual love between Jordan and Fortunata, and also the lesbianism found in the reconstruction of fairy tale of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The novel is like a dream told with interruptions. The author alternates the narrative with two different points of views, which exposes the readers to the deeper thoughts of the characters while we are also shifting between different times and spaces. Sexing the Cherry is more ambitious more Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in representing lesbianism. The reconstruction of The Twelve Dancing Princesses offers a feminist perspective in reading the novel. The dancing princesses are empowered by the author during the process of reconstruction to choose their own fates and rewrite the their predetermined heterosexual endings. Men are no longer the final destination of women's romance. Women can either be independent or seek the same-sex for love. The frequent allusions and to characters in Greek mythologies, like Castor, Pollux and Sappho, strengthens the centrality of homosexuality in the narrative. Winterson, as a postmodern novelist, breaks down the narrative and fills the gaps with the power of intertextuality. She brings the ancient Greece lesbianism and gaiety back to her own story, which is set in the early seventeenth century, and the story itself expands and stretches towards modernity. Sexing the Cherry is, therefore, a book witnessing the evolution and developments of history of homosexuality that gives us a fictional account on how this 'alternative' passion lives through different times.

Winterson is smart in presenting different points of view in her novel. in Sexing the Cherry, she uses the images of a banana and a pineapple to represent the voices of Dog Woman and Jordan respectively. The images help alert the readers that there will be a shift in narrative voice and they should prepare to read the passages from the perspective of that particular character. When the story reaches the contemporary setting, Winterson presents the voices of modern Jordan and Dog Woman with a split banana and pineapple. So the split signals the transformation of time, and her fictional imagination goes beyond the level of words. The split images also lead the readers to think whether there is connection between the deformed food with the deformed narrative or characters. Brevity and concision should be the right words to describe Winterson's writing style. She aims at presenting the deepest thoughts with the simplest words, which is why she is canonical author in contemporary British, or maybe World, literature. Different from any realist novels in the Victorian period whose authors tell as much as they can for fear that they may miss any uninteresting details, Winterson tells as less as she can. When she is not telling all what she wants to say ...the words leave space for the readers to think. Though it is demanding to read to Winterson's Sexing the Cherry, it is absolutely pleasurable as nothing is the truth in her book.

Winterson is a bohemian going against convention in Sexing the Cherry. Apart from the heterosexual norm I have mentioned, she also challenges other conventions, like truth and lies, and also the idea of time and space. "Time has no meaning, and space and place have no meaning". This quote from the novel may self-explain why the story is not fixedly set at a time and why the author brings back Greek homosexual mythologies to her narrative with Britain as the setting. Winterson is also troubling what are truth and time. She denies all the institutionalized concepts in our minds. The narrator puts a list of lies in the novel, renouncing that, for example, "time is a straight line" and that "we can only be in one place at a time". These denials fit the style of the novel, which is a fantasy across different times and spaces. Winterson rejects all the preoccupied conventions and addresses them directly to the audiences. ... with her power of imagination and might of words on paper and give readers an incredible contemporary masterpiece.Jeanette Winterson is the queen of fantasy and imagination. She links the impossible together and makes them possible in her books. She rejects the right and makes them seem wrong that demands a second of consideration before taking them for granted. Sexing the Cherry is a must to read and should be listed as an important text in contemporary lesbian or fantasy fiction.

A decade after reading it, Sexing the Cherry remains one of my favorite books. The stories are magical, humorous, entertaining, and challenge you to explore your preconceptions. Set in the Middle Ages, the book swings back and forth between the son and the mother, aka The Dog Woman.

The mother is routed in reality, which includes being practical and coping with being obese. She has no use for fantasy and emotion. The son lives in an incredible world of make believe. He makes fantastic voyages to imaginary lands. We are invited to experience both realities.

The son is endlessly chasing after an amazing woman he has only glimpsed, but learns about finding all you need within yourself. The book shows that you can make journeys through time and space within your own mind. The book is feminist in nature, and celebrates strong, independent women. I highly recommend it for open minded readers!

CHERRY was my first experience reading Winterson. Once I got used to her spare, comical style, I was pulled straight into her magical abyss, intoxicated by it. The novel is absolutely beautiful, reading like a dream of sorts, with colorful images and characters, clever dialogue (common in all of Winterson), and intensely questioning and philosophical ideas raised. You must buy and read this book--to get a feel for Winterson, if nothing else.

Jeanette Winterson is an amazing writer. She combines the fantastical with the mundane gracefully and magically. Her writing is eloquent, intelligent and thoughtful -- thought provoking as well as heart-wrenching.

That said, her work isn't right for everyone. "Sexing the Cherry" was the first Winterson book I read and it's extraordinary. I loved it from the first page, and re-read it passionately at regular intervals. But, it is a novel about fantasy, love, lust and desire (as well as time, life, truth, and so on). She deals with the dramatic and the passionate; she bends genders, time and reality. Readers uncomfortable with candid and graphic writing may be unimpressed with Winterson and her style. I don't find her to be perverse, or a man-hater or anything in those arenas. I don't think she aims to set back feminism, or that she does so in her writing.

"Sexing the Cherry" is an excellent text to start reading Winterson with. It's relatively short and explores all the "big" topics that are out there in classic Winterson style. I haven't read much like her, but I've been looking for it, and I'll continue to faithfully read her novels when I find them.

If you love language, life, and love itself, you should love Winterson.

A delightful little book filled with mirth, quirky images, and lively prose. With much of the action set in the 17th Century, the story revolves around the adventures of two main characters, the mysterious Dog-Woman and her adopted son Jordan. For readers familiar with Winterson's work, it will come as no surprise that gender politics dominate much of the intellectual landscape, especially the tenuous nature of romantic love. However, it is the lightness and warmth in the story that make it a pleasure to read.

I'm very open to experimental fiction, but I just couldn't get into this one. The book had absolutely no focus; there were plenty of dots, but no lines connecting them. I've heard the author's other books are better, so I won't completely give up on her.

This is an amazing book! The title may make people think it is a preverted book but no! When I first decided to read it I was a bit close minded. But after the first few pages the author lured me into her tale. Being 13 I got a lot of negative comments about reading this book. I do not think I have read anything that had made me think so much in a long time. Sexing the Cherry is sort of a philosophy book only it is done in a story and it is not at all like reading a philosophy book. You do stop and just think about what you read. I think Sexing the Cherry should be required reading for everyone. I thank God I found this book. READ IT! Warning: If you do not like books that require thinking then do not read this.