Product Description

Henri had a passion for Napoleon and Napoleon had a passion for chicken. From Boulogne to Moscow, Henri butchered for his Emperor and never killed a single man. Meanwhile, in Venice, the city of chance and disguises, Villanelle was born with the webbed feet of her boatman father - but in the casinos she gambled her heart and lost. As the soldier-chef's love for Napoleon turns to hate he finds the Venetian beauty, and together they flee to the canals of darkness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32351 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 OBE is the author of ten novels, including Oranges are not the Only Fruit, The Passion and Sexing the Cherry; a book of short stories, The World and Other Places; a collection of essays, Art Objects as well as many other works, including children's books, screenplays and journalism. Her writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E. M. Forster Award and the Prix d'argent at Cannes Film Festival.

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.

An Adventure of the Passions
I read Oranges are not the only Fruits a long time ago and was impressed. Since then I have always wanted to read a second novel by Jeanette Winterson. The Passion, first published in 1987, is now 21 years old. At long last what finally prompted me to read a second novel by Winterson was the fact that in 2006 the Observer newspaper, following the New York Post, published a list it regarded as the fifty best novels from 1980 to 2005 written by British, Irish or Commonwealt novelists. Miss Winterson's The Passion featured in the list. In reading The Passion, did I ultimately regret the long delay in reading a second novel by Winterson?

The Passion is a very short novel that outline the fantastic adventures of its two main characters - Henri and Villanelle. The adventures are set against the backdrop of Napoleon's campaingns which effectively gives some shape to the novel. The story is structured in four parts with two first person narrators. This in itself demands a careful read especially as in the final part the narration suddenly shifts back and forth between Henry and Villanelle.

In a short preface to the 2001 edition, Miss Winterson tells us that: "The Passion was written in 1986, boom time of the Thatcher years." It appears that part of Miss Winterson's aim was to counter the Thatcherite culture of boom and get rich quick city boys. She states: "I wanted to write a separate world, not as an escape, as a mirror, a secret looking glass that would sharpen and multiply the possibilities of the actual world." So in this world that Jeanette Winterson sets out to create she reveals to us the extremes of human desires and behaviour. There is cross dressing, theft, prostitution, gambling where the stakes are very high, murder, but above all, and perhaps the saving grace there is falling passionately in love.

There is no doubt that this is a highly imaginative piece of writing. There are some acute observations but one must admit that within themselves do not always add up to much. Take for example the following: "I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about happy because largely they are not." If you are therefore looking to read something that is grounded in realism then this is not for you as it was, broadly speaking, not for me. However, one must admire Miss Winterson's boldness to attempt something 'new'.

The text, narration and structure of this novel is very self-conscious. It could be said that the text is a writely one. Winterson wants to cast herself in the tradition of the great writerly novelists - I won't give any example. Her novel therefore attempts to draw attention to the mechanism of the story just as much as it does the story itself. In doing so Miss Winterson forces us, the reader, to produce meaning from it.

Ultimately, The Passion strikes me as a book that attempts to reveal the extremes to which humans are prepared to go to achieve their passions. The passions we pursue are alternatives to the drudgery of our mundane daily activities. But they can be dangerous to pursue. As Winterson says you could find yourself "among the desperate".

I sturggled to decide whether or not to rate this novel a two or three stars. In the end I opted for three stars because some of the final passages are quite moving as we realise that in the final analysis love conquers all. Henri locked up in prison tells us: "I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligations but being able to love." Henri also reveals that even in prison one can still have the verve for life. In oxymoron fashion he says: "I like to know that life will outlive me, that's a happiness Bonaparte never understood."