Product Description

Winner of the 1987 John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize, this psychological fantasy is about two disillusioned young people who seek to revive their former passions. The book is concerned with gambling, madness and androgynous sexuality amidst the dark, deceptive canals of Venice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13017 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson won the Whitbread Award for best first fiction for the semi-autobiographical Oranges are not the Only Fruit, an often wry exploration of lesbian possibility bumping up against evangelical fanaticism. She was 25. Two years later, The Passion, her third novel, appeared, the fantastical tale of Henri--Napoleon's cook--and Villanelle, a Venetian gondolier's daughter who has webbed feet (previously an all-male attribute), works as a croupier, picks pockets, cross-dresses and literally loses her heart to a beautiful woman. Written in a lyrical and jolting combination of fairy-tale diction and rhythm and the staccato, the book would be a risky proposition in lesser hands. Winterson has said that she wanted to look at people's need to worship and examine what happens to young men in militaristic societies. The question was, how to do so without being polemical and didactic? Only she could have come up with such an exquisite answer. In the end, Henri, incarcerated on an island of madmen, becomes aware that his passion, "even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else." --Amazon.com

Guardian
'It's a fantasy, a vivid dream-inventive and brilliant'

About the Author
Jeanette Winterson is the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body, Art and Lies, Gut Symmetries, The World and Other Places and a collection of essays, Art Objects

Customer Reviews

the pain and pleasure of love
Love. When you mean it, when you really feel overwhelmed by someone there is pain as well as plasure. That is one aspect of this brilliant book. How faith in one human being can lead thousands to war, how nine days and nights can be the most important of your life. The book looks at how one person can completly alter your life and way of thinking. How love for another can make you look at yourself and the world differently. When love isn't returned it can lead to genuine pain and grief, but when returned the notion of happily ever after and a wonderful world seem within reason. Jeanette Winterson has written a beautiful book. It has a strong fantasy element but there is truth on every page, and we will all recognise feelings and fears we ourselves have experienced though we may never have been in war or walked on water. Reading a book like this makes you feel less lonely, and I would recommend it to anyone. Nicola.

I think this is my favourite Winterson novel
I love the way Winterson's prose slips so quietly and elegantly into your brain, it sparkles, but discreetly, nothing vulgar... Re-reading her work is like returning to somewhere beautiful, you can't get the smile off your face because it's just as lovely as you imagined it would be... I love The Passion particularly because Henri's acceptance that he can't give Villanelle what she needs is so plain and painful. Everyone can recognise the ache when he says 'When I dream of a future in her arms no dark days appear, not even a head cold, and though I know it is nonsense I really believe we would always be happy and our children would save the world.' The knowing it to be nonsense and the believing it to be true, that is such an elegant way to describe the absurdity of love, I think. Do read it, it's marvellous.

'Somewhere between fear and sex passion is' Wonderful!
When I read this novel I did not do it out of choice. It was one of the books to be studied in my first year English degree so I was prepared to be bored all the way through. Nothing could have been further from the truth as I ended up reading it all the way through without being able to put it down. 'The Passion' is split into three sections and these can be read separately or one after the other as a novel. They stand on their own but when read together the result is magical. It is a novel about self revelation and stories; what is true, what is made up and can we really tell between them? As the story moves forward it is forever grounded by repetative phrases that draw attention to the fact that it is only a story 'I'm telling you stories, trust me'. Yet, the novel is so well written that one finds oneself actually starting to believe until you are once again reminded 'I'm telling you stories, trust me'; this phrase is mainly used in connection with the more historcal plot about Henri and his career in the army. I know, people tend to run a mile whenever history is mentioned but Winterson's writing about the rule of Napolean is hardly typical. There is another phrase that predominates in the book which tends to follow the other plot set in Venice. It follows Villanelle, a girl who cross dresses for work in a casino and how she constructs her identity. Her story is passionate and tender. The phrase associtated with her is a not only a pun on her job but on how she lives 'you play, you win, you play, you lose. You play.' The third phrase sums up the book and gives it a backbone on which to base the stories of the two main characters 'somewhere between fear and sex passion is'. IT IS A MUST TO READ AND IS TO BE RECOMENDED TO ANYONE WHO ENJOYS STORIES. IT IS FANTASTIC AND INVENTIVE NOVEL ABOUT PASSION, GAMBLING, MADNESS AND ECSTASY.