Synopses & Reviews
Innovative in style, its humour by turns punchy and tender, Jeanette Wintersons first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession. Its a love story, too. Wintersons adaptation of the novel was an internationally acclaimed television drama awarded a BAFTA for best drama and an RTS award in the same year; the Prix Italia; FIPA DArgent at Cannes for best script; The Golden Gate in San Francisco and an ACE Award at the Los Angeles television festival.
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
Synopsis
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 Gods 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.