With language as dazzling as the wondrous visionary landscapes they evoke, these seventeen works transport the reader to worlds in which sleep is illegal, the lives of lonely department store clerks are transformed by fairies, the rich wear coal jewelry on an island of diamonds, and the living laminate their dead. Here is a universe where rooms go missing, women give birth to their lovers, and the young contemplate God's creative powers through pet tortoises.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Her first short story collection exhibits the multitude of talents that have made English novelist Jeanette Winterson not just admired but beloved by her many fans. There are the surprising, fresh little phrases minted expressly to convey the delicate realities of the made-up world. There's the humor, fierce and sly but always kind. There's the imagination that changes gender and historical epoch at whim, and does so convincingly; and the characters themselves, a sundry bunch of men and women not necessarily successful or commendable but always, somehow, likable. Best of all, by their very diversity, these stories reveal glimpses of the smart and enigmatic woman behind the work.
In "Atlantic Crossing," Winterson becomes a middle-aged businessman of the mid-20th century, accidentally assigned to share his second-class cabin with a young black woman on a transatlantic crossing. In the realm of event, little happens, but in its depth of perception and what it tells of the nuances of regret, the story is as rich as a novel in another writer's hands. A few scant pages later, Winterson becomes a kind of lost female Homer, telling Orion's story from Artemis's point of view: "When she returned she saw this huge rag of a man eating her goat, raw.... His reputation hung about him like bad breath." In "The Poetics of Sex," she creates a lesbian love story that evokes her characters' personalities as explicitly as their erotic pleasures. "The 24-Hour Dog," the story of a woman writer returning a puppy she had thought to adopt, is remorseless as a psychological thriller in the squirmy depths it plumbs: "I had made every preparation, every calculation, except for those two essentials that could not be calculated: his heart and mine." Read The World and Other Places twice, once for instruction, once for joy. --Joyce Thompson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The detached awareness of Winterson's characters, with their biblically informed psyches and receptivity to the paranormal, make the 17 stories of this collection more proverbial than narrative. When in her acknowledgments Winterson (Gut Symmetries) thanks those who have "bought or bludgeoned" them from her, she's quite right: there's nothing fulsome here. Her spare gestures reduce prose to an eerie elemental state. In "The 24-Hour Dog," the narrator's encounter with a two-month-old puppy purchased from a farmer transports her: "The Sistine Chapel is unpainted, no book has been written. There is the moon, the water, the night, one creature's need and another's response. The moment between chaos and shape and I say his name and he hears me." In other stories, such as "O'Brien's First Christmas," the alien intrudes in the form of a midnight visitation by a tutued fairy on a downcast shopgirl. The feminist allegory "Orion" recasts the myth of Artemis and her predatory paramour; "Disappearance I" imagines a futuristic dystopia in which sleep has become as taboo as red light sex. Though the aftertaste of this unflinchingly provocative and stringently witty collection is somewhat bitter, Winterson's stories reveal another facet of a writer much acclaimed for her virtuosity and complexity.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sharp,,
By A Customer
This review is from: The World and Other Places (Hardcover)
I enjoyed reading Winterson in a short-story form for a change. Working within the confines of a shorter structure lends unusual economy to her generally spiraling imagery; she's more direct and paints with a somewhat broader stroke. I was delighted to experience a wide range of perspectives on a wide range of topics. "The 24-Hour Dog" works on so many levels I want to teach it in a writing class. I'd recommend this to anyone wanting an introduction to Winterson, because here one finds some almost conventional works among stories of almost surreal bent.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful collection of short stories!,
This review is from: The World and Other Places: Stories (Paperback)
Jeanette Winterson never fails to amaze me. Her stories -- an assortment of ambiguous genders and historical elements mixed with poetic and philosophical undertones and magical realism -- are true literary masterpieces. Having read The Passion, The Powerbook and Written on the Body, I thought I'd give one of her anthologies a whirl. The World and Other Places transcends Winterson's talents in gigantic proportions. My favorite stories are "Atlantic Crossing," "The Poetics of Sex," and "24-Hour Dog." The aforementioned stories are what Winterson is about. She humanizes situations that are otherwise seen as taboo subjects -- and she does so with wonderful literary offerings. I couldn't recommend this gem enough...
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Each story could be a novel in itself,
By
This review is from: The World and Other Places: Stories (Paperback)
Winterson's fiction is compelling because she teaches a little bit about the physical world while at the same time leading the reader on a spectacular emotional journey. She is like a naturalist of the inner life, pointing out highlights along the way. Her writing is so beautiful it may make you cry.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
|
|
