Sexing the Cherry (Winterson, Jeanette) [Paperback]

Jeanette Winterson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Winterson, Jeanette | Publication Date: August 10, 1998

In a fantastic world that is and is not seventeenth-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. The child, Jordan, is rescued by Dog Woman and grows up to travel the world like Gulliver, though he finds that the world’s most curious oddities come from his own mind. Winterson leads the reader from discussions on the nature of time to Jordan’s fascination with journeys concealed within other journeys, all with a dizzying speed that shoots the reader from epiphany to shimmering epiphany.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Evoking modern physics and antique metaphysics, Winterson's ambitiously eccentric narrative challenges her readers to rupture the boundaries of conventional perceptions and linear experience of time. Her narrative voices, alternating between a Rabelaisian giantess and her foundling son, collapse at times into one another and the characters plunge vertiginously through time and space. On the one hand reworking fairy tales, and on the other evoking the filth, squalor and exuberant bawdiness of 17th-century England in the throes of civil war, Winterson ( The Passion ) eventually locates her characters in present-day London. Graced with striking similes and poetic cadences, the author's prose is clean and strong, and the disjunctive elements of her narrative are integrated elegantly. But the novel's freakish characters and flights of surreal fancy are insufficient to redeem its overwrought artifice. The work is further limited by its stridently dogmatic feminism, which, contemptuously belittling all men as arrogantly stupid bullies who are vastly women's inferiors in maturity and moral fiber, vitiates its ostensible intent to transcend the narrowness of human perception.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Bizarre images and bawdy laughter galvanize this splendid English farce about a prodigious giantess and her explorer son in 17th-century London. Jordan fetches the first pineapple to the court of Charles II, while his mother, The Dog Woman, wreaks vengeance upon Puritans in a brothel. The plague; the flying princesses who defy laws of the courts and gravity; Jordan's travels to the floating city and the botanical wonders of the New World--the tale nips easily in and out of history and fantasy. The two characters eventually merge into the grievously polluted life of modern London. Metaphors abound with polemics on environmental concerns and politics of past and present. Not for the Jackie Collins set: readers need a background in surrealism to follow this story.
- Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (August 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802135781
• ISBN-13: 978-0802135780
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #288,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sexing the Cherry, July 29, 2002

By 

Megami (Darwin, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sexing the Cherry (Winterson, Jeanette) (Paperback)

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.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fabulesque!, September 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Sexing the Cherry (Paperback)

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

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully written, inventive, imaginative journey in time!, September 30, 2001

By 

Chicago Dreamer "chicagodreamer" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sexing the Cherry (Winterson, Jeanette) (Paperback)

"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!