118. Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere – Jeanette Winterson

It’s also been a very long time between visits to Jeanette Winterson’s work so when this book threw itself in my path I bought it on impulse. Later on I realised it was signed and was obviously delighted by serendipity. I have adored Winterson since my first reading of the Stone Gods. Every book of hers I pick up is somehow unexpected, the mundane becomes interesting, mixed in with fairytale or a retelling of a play. Characters can be the largest giantess caricature or the most real, full of humility individual (who just so happens to be a robot) speaking from a repeating world. Much like a lighthouse on the edge of a dark choppy ocean, I keep coming back to Winterson. She has become a bit of a hero of mine.

I can’t exactly pinpoint why she is though, perhaps it is the variation in her work, the obvious experimentation and blend of elements that build up very different books. There is no set genre to her work. Maybe it’s the queer that seems to run through a good portion of her work, which isn’t shoehorned in as a fetishised exhibit. Or maybe it is a combination of a lot of things with brilliant story telling. Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere doesn’t fall short of her usual intelligent, style, but it has a healthy dose of the conversation ease found in Why be Happy when you could be Normal?

Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere – Jeanette Winterson

Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere is short enough to read in an hour and adapted from lectures. Published at the anniversary of a hundred years of (white) women (in Britain) getting the vote. It manages to say a lot of important things loudly, sometimes with humour, but is thought provoking and a great quick insight into history. While it is chewable if you’re well versed in suffragette history it may be nothing new to you, but it is written in a way that I found quite invigorating. Courage is both a reminder of how far we’ve come and a hopeful nudge to keep going and if you’re new to feminism and new to the history of gender equality then I implore you to give Courage a go.

Alongside the edge of wry humour and likening suffragettes to Pussy Riot there is an extra spoonful of passion that toes the line of anger. Courage is the size of a postcard and a good third of it’s 72 pages are taken up with Emmeline Pankhurst’s famous 1913 speech ‘Freedom or Death’. But any anger within Courage is justified and comes from disenfranchisement, and frustration. And for something so slim and seemingly brief (it’s brief at first glance only) it riled me up.

Winterson reminds us there is still a war of the sexes going on, there is still inequality on the street and in the work place and in the home, but the glaring truth of this battle is that discrimination of any kind is never rational it only pretends to be rational. Arriving at the present day having women taking up more space than the previous hundred years is not a justification for saying feminism is finished and there is no more work to be done. It is a common mistake to make to think that it is a fight won. It is a revolution that is still singing and is still unfinished.

Why? Feminism can always be more inclusive, more intersectional, louder, clearer, and more instrumental in keeping the autonomy of bodies through health care, choice, and consent, safe (for a few). Winterson remarks on biology as destiny being an old fashioned idea, and the need for more women in technology, the success of the recent #MeToo movement, and equal pay.

She recalls the Marriage Bar where certain jobs and careers were not open to married women. That it wasn’t until 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal to manipulate the labour market in favour of men. Although it may be clear that society is still dealing with the long shadow thrown by previous constraints, Britain is a rich and progressive country, but we have food-banks and large-scale poverty. Winterson mentions the 2008 crash, exploitative gig economy, domestic violence and Trump. And rather than being fear mongering, or a battle cry, I left it feeling hopeful and recognised.

I think what I’m getting at is Courage reminds us that if we sit in the shit for long enough, it stops smelling, but it doesn’t stop it from being shit that we’re sitting in.

It reminds us of the long shadow cast by systems that seek to dominate, belittle, and remove autonomy, and how fighting for equality, here and abroad (and of course with intersectionality) is still really important. It reminds us that Feminism is still a working part of every day equality, and if we give it up to the past as a dirty word or something that belonged to a previous century we will be doing ourselves a disservice. If it is “retired” or cast aside as irrelevant, we will be loosing a great part of the arsenal that belongs to the spheres of civil rights and equality.

73. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

That’s the big question isn’t it, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Again we have arrived at a novel that seems to have appeared just at the right time. I have had a busy few weeks and have lost some of the reading momentum that I gained last month, but I have also been to Paris and finally graduated. In Paris I was lucky enough to find a couple more members of what I consider my ‘tribe’ and certainly came home a little more myself than when I left for the airport. In my downtime it was of course time for something that would make me ponder. Why Be Happy is Jeanette Winterson’s silent twin to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. But instead of the cover story of surviving adoption into a strictly Christian household Why Be Happy is a reflection on the reality of Winterson’s upbringing and herself.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson

This is one of those novels where Winterson’s writing is at it’s best. It is generous with humour, it is beautiful in agony and it takes you on a journey into madness and out again. But Why Be Happy  also reads an analytical exploration, if one was sitting across from Winterson having a chat about her upbringing, life, love, political views and how books may have just rescued her more than once.

A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place. – p. 40

When I picked up this novel I knew nothing about Winterson really other than I enjoy her work and she is an author I always seem to gravitate towards. After putting this novel down, I admire her. I admire her resilience, the blunt manner she unravels herself with and most of all I admire such close to the bone honesty with the reader. Even in moments where someone else may feel they have lost dignity or made ill informed decisions, Why Be Happy retains an integrity that is unshakable because of it’s frankness.

It is the story of Winterson’s life from Birth. Adoption, her mother (probably depressed), eternally describing the coming apocalypse of quite honestly not feeling like the ‘right’ child and being told that frequently by Mrs. Winterson. A quiet almost absent father who remarries later on in life after Mrs. Winterson has passed away. From what seem to be grim beginnings, that include poor grades and a disrupted school life, there are still books. The beginning of this book is full of dislocation, a screaming baby that is nicknamed the ‘devils child’, and a mother who tries to want to be soft and longs to find her adopted child is the child she expected.

Were we endlessly ransacking the house, the two of us, looking for evidence of each other? I think we were – she, because I was fatally unknown to her, and she was afraid of me. Me, because I had no idea what was missing but felt the missing-ness of the missing. We circled each other, wary, abandoned, full of longing. – p. 103

When young Jeanette Winterson discovers the library she begins reading from Literature from A to Z. But the private war that has always belonged to the Winterson household, sometimes seen by the neighbours when Jeannette is locked out for the night and sleeps on the doorstep, still rages. Mrs. Winterson has banned books from the house (except the bible). But Jeannette smuggles them in. They are promptly burnt on discovery. But this does not dissuade Jeannette, but seems to encourage her thirst for knowledge for what is outside her family and she hangs onto what she loves and who she is with even more violence.

Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. – p. 61

Then there is first loves, and specifically falling in love with women which is distinctly not ‘normal’ or acceptable in the eyes of Mrs. Winterson. And then university and publication and after a lifetime of not knowing, Jeanette Winterson decides to find her birth mother and unravel the mystery of her beginnings.

It is a poignant novel that speaks volumes about mental health and even in part the creative processes and the misconstrued ideas that couple with them. But this novel also ends at what almost feels like a midpoint because Winterson is obviously not done with her own story and life has an inevitable ending that can’t be written, beyond an obituary.

Creativity is on the side of health – it isn’t the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity minus that tries to save us from madness. – p171

But it also encourages the reader not to think of happiness as a continual state or of something that can be achieved like a goal in a race. It demonstrates that happiness is something to work on, and work for. It is sometimes fleeting, it sometimes escapes us for months, but it is worth pursuing in the long run. I often find myself thinking of this novel as a bit of a warning. Overall this read was much more satisfying to me than Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. I felt that one seemed to be a deflection, it lacked something for me that didn’t quite grasp me but instead encouraged me to look elsewhere which I suppose vs. Why Be Happy was the point of that novel.

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal is a text I take a good helping of hope from I am a young working class writer, dyslexic, and recently graduated from an MA and differ greatly from what is ‘usual’. Normality, or at least Mrs. Winterson’s version of normality is a bleak place where she disappears for days at a time when she leaves egg custard in the kitchen, and is forever unpleasant to her daughter and insisting that the apocalypse is coming so we must all be miserable in time for that.

So I entirely agree. Why be normal, or someone else’s version of it, when you could be happy.

47. The Gap of Time

Jeanette Winterson is one of those authors I can’t seem to shake off. I’ve read a lot of her work and every novel I encounter is rich and vibrant and wildly different from the last. Her strength is in her uncomplicated yet striking prose and decedent story telling. There are some of her novels that hit the mark for me entirely, others miss it a little but when Winterson does hit the mark she is a formidable force in storytelling. She is always inventive, she grasps existing narratives and twists them into her own design. She has rewritten fairytales, handled queer themes with extraordinary dexterity, and never shies away from the uncomfortable (just a few reasons why I cannot stop reading her work).

The Gap of Time – Jeanette Winterson

This novel, for me, is Winterson at her very best. Her writing is easy and surprising, it’s gripping, economical and in some parts nears the poetic. The narrative itself is a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and keeps close pace with the original play while giving it a modern spin that feels contemporary.

Leo (King Leontes within the play) plans to kill his best friend Xeno (Polixenes) because he believes Xeno is sleeping with his wife MiMi (Hermione). MiMi is heavily pregnant and famous within her own right as a successful singer. Leo is a ruthless hedge fund manager who’s accustomed to getting his own way and not being disputed with. He is convinced that MiMi’s second child is not his and is instead Xeno’s. Through no fault of his own Xeno’s intimate friendship with MiMi throws tension over the entire narrative, coupled with ambiguous sexuality that fuels Leo’s rage. Leo attempts to kill Xeno forcing him to flee and then confronts MiMi as she gives birth to their daughter, Perdita, in the midst of some brutal pages. He still refuses to hear reason or sense and instead of accepting the child he bribes his gardener to make his daughter disappear.

But the story doesn’t end there, through a terrible accident Tony is shot by thugs after hiding Perdita in a baby-hatch at the local hospital. Shep and Clo are passing when they see both the concealment and the shooting and Shep takes it upon himself to bring Perdita up himself. Perdita grows into a remarkable young woman, and then is destined to find the truth of her unusual beginnings in the world.

It is rare that I find myself shaken from a novel but the misogynistic rage that faced me from Leo, although fictional, resonated with me in a very powerful way. I have taken a while to consider why this is and I think maybe it lies in how the first half of the novel is intended to make the reader pass judgement on Leo and his actions.

Some of the novel falls out of step with the play but only in a minor way, for example the play has King Leontes degrading and humiliating his wife in a vicious way in front of the Royal Court. Winterson however withholds judgement, expecting that the bedroom she sets Leo to his violence in will provide Courtroom enough for reader to play judge and jury and react much as Shakespeare’s Royal Court: disgusted. Readership is given trust to be silent witness to the entire disintegration of Leo’s obsessive irrationality, which creates an intense read which is never fully convincing as we gain the advantage of also seeing the reality behind Leo’s accusations. We see plutonic intimacy between Xeno and MiMi which Leo demands is sexual infidelity. We see sexual jealousy, we see possessiveness, we see fear, and we see the horror.

This is not to say this novel is like this the entire way through though, as it does ultimately have a happy ending. It is the children of this novel who find the real happy ending, and unlike Othello, Hermione is not murdered and Leo does not die, and after a long winding journey, some sort of forgiveness is found. This is a passionate retelling. Winterson admits that The Winter’s Tale has been a play that she has adored for more than 30 years because:

“It’s a play about a foundling. And I am. It’s a play about forgiveness and a world of possible futures – and how forgiveness and the future are tied together in both directions. Time is reversible.” p.284

This novel has a lot more to unpick than initially meets the eye. The cast of characters are diverse and not all of them are as they appear and there is something very relatable in all of them. I would read this again happily. As I mentioned earlier on, this is Winterson at her very best.

8. Boating for Beginners

Some of you might remember that I decided to take a little holiday from my Reading Challenge. Firstly I smashed through Divergent by Veronica Roth and I’ve slowly, very slowly, been drifting through Jeanette Winterson’s Boating for Beginners. Granted this is not a novel on my Reading Challenge list but like my Divergent post I thought why not? I haven’t been very active lately so let’s make a little effort.

Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson

As you can see this novel is yet ANOTHER charity shop find. I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, charity shops are a limitless resource. If you are a big book worm like me who currently has limited resources use your charity shops. Sure you might not be able to find anything your looking for, but you might just walk out with six books you’ve been after for a long time.

This Winterson novel is a rewrite of Noah’s Ark story. It is very entertaining much like Sexing the Cherry, the Winterson novel I read earlier this year. It’s light hearted and satirical and very much a re-imagining. If you like Terry Pratchett’s work, you will very much enjoy this novel. It’s taken me a long time to get through it simply because I’ve had a lot going on.

“Freud says we are preoccupied with deluges as a safeguard against bed-wetting.” – Boating for Beginners, Winterson, p66

It follows Noah, and some other characters, in the discovery of what the Unpronounceable really is and how this deity has come to be, and how the flood comes about. There is friction in beliefs across this world, whether or not fridges and freezers should be allowed and if they are healthy. Ham, and his attempt at opening a fast food chain. Gloria who is having an intellectual awakening, from being spoon fed trash romantic fiction all of her life she discovers philosophy and feminism and transexuals. Generally this is a sweet and endearing little tale. It also works on the premise that Noah is trying to scam future generations with his rewrite of his manuscript that tells of the coming of the Unpronounceable. And of course, as always, Winterson’s writing is first class.

“She’s soggy round the edges and peculiar in her outlook but her heart is still loud; and to keep the roaring inside, however you do it, must be worth something.” –Boating for Beginners, Winterson, p67

I always find myself falling in love with Winterson’s work, no matter how hard I try there are just always lines that I can’t get enough of. There are definitely a couple of lines that resonated with me and of course the characterisation is beautifully done.

“She had always imagined that pain suited her. It didn’t. It made her fat and a lunatic, and she realised it for the first time.” – Boating for Beginners, Winterson, p94

This is a novel that covers a lot of ideas and it discusses a lot of things very subtly and without judgement. In the best possible way it is human and charming and beautifully enjoyable and accepting. I will certainly read this again someday.

It is also a very good day for me, as I was given a little cash for Easter as I am mostly unable to eat mainstream chocolate. So I treated myself finally:

The Martian by Andy Weir and Issue 4 of Saga

1. Sexing the Cherry

Here it is bring out the trumpets, fanfare galore I’ve read the first one on my list!!

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

 

This is not my first Winterson Novel, I am slightly in love with the variety of work she produces. I adore the touches of queer romance that appears over and over again. I also find myself excited and brought something new with every novel I read. In short, I am a big fan of this woman. Though it may have something to do with the first novel I read, the Stone Gods which has lesbian robots in it. But that’s a story for another day.

Right so where do we begin really, this novel follows the story of a young man in the search of a dancer because he believes he is in love with her. It is also the story of his mother who is a giantess who honestly is one of the most entertaining characters I’ve read for a longtime. This is also a novel which does its best to rewrite fairytales, greek myth, and flit through time. Honestly, I’d say its done rather enjoyably, although alas, my attention did start to drift by the end of the novel.

However my favourite part of the novel is the rewriting of the Twelve Princesses. I’m referring to the Twelve Princesses whom escape every night to dance holes into their slippers and appear exhausted the next morning. Ultimately a Prince does not drink their sleeping draught and he catches them in the act and gets to marry any of his choosing. All in all Winterson’s re-imagination of the traditional story had me enthralled.

Winterson has the Princesses find each other after they have been married off to the Prince’s brothers. Eleven of them tell their tale, the twelfth of course being the woman, Jordan, the young man, is searching for is absent. There is betrayal, loss, longing, escape, there’s even love denied. Honestly the romantic in me just completely fell in love with some of the lines in his novel. So I’ve quoted them for you, so you can see the magic of Winterson’s writing.

“Why could he not turn his life towards me, as trees though troubled by the wind yet continue in the path of the sun?” p51

The above quote is from one of the sisters who’s lover marries her only so his liaisons with other women are more exciting. This ruins her expectations of marriage, although she attempts the happiness she so wishes.

“He looked surprised, I don’t know why. As your lover describes you, so you are.” p56

The above quote is from one of the sisters who’s lover convinces her she is a fierce wild animal, chaining her up etc. and is then surprised as she kills him.

“I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn’t use language to make a war-zone of my heart.” p57

And this quotation is from one of the sisters who’s lover is having an affair and tells her about it and expects more of a reaction than the one he receives.

Winterson really niggles down at the kinds of love people have for one another and the reactions that they might face in circumstance. For example, Jordan’s Mother see’s that he is desperate to travel:

“I saw the look on Jordan’s face and my heart became a captive in a locked room. I couldn’t reach him now. I knew he would go.” p71

There is something effortless in the way Winterson wordsmiths and something incredibly human. Its almost poetic but done so effortlessly it reminds me very much of another of her novels Written on the Body.

“My own heart, like this wild place, has never been visited, and I do not know whether it could sustain life.” p80

And honestly that is the last one. If you want anymore you are going to have to read the novel and find your own lines that tug at your heart strings. There’s not much else I can say about this novel, I really enjoyed it, I found the writing left me salivating for more. The characterisation was unbelievably clear and crisp to the point that I believe I will be carrying Jordan’s Mother around in my head for years to come. It wasn’t a labour to read, although of course its taken me longer than it should have as I’ve been distracted.

This is a novel that tries to do a lot, of course, as you’d expect from Winterson. It’s trying to defy liner time and be an unsettling paradox. Its a very similar idea that she revisits in the Stone Gods. Which I believe is also executed better in the Stone Gods. As for story telling, Winterson excels. This novel is made up of lots of chunks of other stories, in that respect it is very much like her other novels Lighthouse Keeping and the Passion and to some degree Oranges are not the only Fruit. 

However this novel stands well alone. Its enjoyable, its beautiful and surprising at times and I highly recommend it. This novel is without a doubt on my re-read list.

Other Winterson novels I have read: The Stone Gods, the Passion, Lighthouse Keeping, Oranges are not the only Fruit, Written on the Body.