Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4460 in Books
• Published on: 1991-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 171 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Jeanette, the protagonist of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and the author's namesake, has issues--"unnatural" ones: her adopted mam thinks she's the Chosen one from God; she's beginning to fancy girls; and an orange demon keeps popping into her psyche. Already Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiographical first novel is not your typical coming-of-age tale.

Brought up in a working-class Pentecostal family, up North, Jeanette follows the path her Mam has set for her. This involves Bible quizzes, a stint as a tambourine-playing Sally Army officer and a future as a missionary in Africa, or some other "heathen state". When Jeanette starts going to school ("The Breeding Ground") and confides in her mother about her feelings for another girl ("Unnatural Passions"), she's swept up in a feverish frenzy for her tainted soul. Confused, angry and alone, Jeanette strikes out on her own path, that involves a funeral parlour and an ice-cream van. Mixed in with the so-called reality of Jeanette's existence growing up are unconventional fairy tales that transcend the everyday world, subverting the traditional preconceptions of the damsel in distress.

In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson knits a complicated picture of teenage angst through a series of layered narratives, incorporating and subverting fairytales and myths, to present a coherent whole, within which her stories can stand independently. Imaginative and mischievous, she is a born storyteller, teasing and taunting the reader to reconsider their worldview. --Nicola Perry

Synopsis
This title, the winner of the 1985 Whitbread Award for a First Novel, chronicles the struggles of a young girl against a domineering mother and the strictures of religion. The novel takes a look at religious excess and human obsession.

About the Author
Jeanette Winterson is the author of many novels including 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, The Powerbook and a collection of essays, Art Objects.

Customer Reviews

Passionate and gritty, a coming of age novel with a difference
A curious mixture of stories and semi-autobiography which come together to shape the life of Jeanette, the adopted daughter of a church-obsessed mother and a quiet, dominated father. Oranges are not the Fruit traces Jeanette teenage years, growing up in a northern town in a community in which she never quite fits, despite her talent for preaching and her wildly imaginative ideas. The structure of the novel, skirting and spiralling between an disjointed biographical narrative and other stories which shape Jeanette's development, suits perfectly what is a gritty discourse on the nature of personality, history and memory and the importance of perspective in developing all three. And at the same time, it's an engaging, if sometimes distressing, story too.

Very well observed
I remember watching Oranges are not the Only Fruit on the BBC, oooh, about 1990/91 and me and my fiancee were enthralled (Married 15 years since!). Having watched an excellent TV series, it took me till now, 2007 to read it as a book. As we watched in Oswaldtwistle, and now I read, in Brierfield, having lived here 17 years, it really spoke to me. The TV version, from what I remember, is an excellent adaptation of the novel, and the novel, absolutely superb. Almost Les Dawson-esque in its portrayal of Lancastrian, particularly East Lancastrianism, familial relations and its constituent claustrophobia. Having been brought up a Catholic and subsequently enthralled by the 'average' Pentecostal knowledge of The Bible (I felt ignorant when in the company of Pentecosts!) and now a secular being ... it brought it all home to me. Elsie Norris reminded me of my own grandmother, understanding and sensitive ...

I devoured this book, and kept wishing there were another two hundred pages to go. It captured so much for me ... Lancashire, christianity (in Lancashire), and the tenderness of youth ... and, as I said, so observant in its Lancashire humour, I laughed out loud to many pages ...

Excellent. I am sure it would be enjoyed by anyone, but if you were brought up a Christian, in the North, surrounded by strong women, and born in the 1960's, I GUARANTEE, you will love it.

Sex, Religion & Great Writing
It's all in the title. This is truely a masterpiece. Being a sort-of biography, the story tells that of Jeanette as a young girl, growing up in a stric religious society whilst having to cope with the struggles of having feelings for another woman.
Throughout the book the main character is faced with the troubles of defying a parental figure, the pains of unacceptance and of course the struggles of lesbianism. Anyone who has fought with the angst of coming to terms with sexuality will relate to this book greatly.