Product Description

A novel of loss and love, and a philosophical meditation on the body. The novel explores the body as a physical entity and as an image of our innermost selves in order to reveal more about the phenomenon of love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16001 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Written on The Body is a tender dissection of erotic love. The prose is like a poem, lush with wit and imagery, but behind the luxuriant relish of the words, there is a scalpel-sharp cut of emotions. Love and longing are the wounds through which Winterson's imagery flows. The novel begins with regret: "Why is the measure of love loss? It hasn't rained in three months ... The grapes have withered on the vine." The narrator is also suffering from a heart-stricken drought. She is grieving for the loss of her true love, Louise.

Louise has flowing Pre-Raphaelite hair, and a body besieged by leukaemia, her cells waging war: "here they come, hurtling through the bloodstream trying to pick a fight." But Louise is not dead, merely abandoned by the narrator with the best of intentions. As the lament continues, striking in its beauty and dazzling inventiveness, more of the love story is revealed. The narrator has been a female Lothario, falling in love, and out again, swaggering like Mercutio. But then she meets Louise, married to Elgin--"very eminent, very dull, very rich"--and is hopelessly, helplessly smitten: "I didn't only want Louise's flesh, I wanted her bones, her blood, her tissues, the sinews that bound her together." Elgin persuades her to leave for the good of Louise's health, and all is undone.

Winterson does not shy away from grief, or joy. She has acutely described how love can transform a life, but also destroy it too. But, for Winterson, where there is love there is hope: "I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world ... I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields." Eithne Farry

Review
Can you write a compelling love story if you conceal the gender of one of the lovers? That's what the much-acclaimed British Winterson attempts in her fourth novel (The Passion, 1988; Sexing the Cherry, 1990; etc.). All we know about the narrator: (S)he lives alone in a London flat. (S)he is a freelance translator (Russian into English). (S)he used to like guys, but now is into women. (S)he will fight if provoked ("I've always had a wild streak"). (S)he has been around the block, and the bedrooms of various married ladies; nonetheless, after Catherine, Inge, Bathsheba, etc., (s)he is settling down with nice, undemanding Jacqueline when along comes Louise: an Australian redhead, married for ten years to wealthy, Jewish Elgin, a cancer researcher. Louise pursues the narrator ("you were the most beautiful creature male or female I had ever seen"), who happily succumbs; Louise leaves Elgin, and the lovers have five blissful months together before Elgin tells the narrator that Louise has cancer. Back under his care, she might survive; otherwise, no hope. The narrator leaves town ("our love was not meant to cost you your life"), then returns but fails to find Louise, who miraculously reappears. Granted, Winterson has found a medium-hip narrative voice that fits her requirements; that aside, her concealed gender gimmick is a barren demonstration of her craft. The cost of withholding is too high; a strained lyricism must do duty for the particulars of love, and the puzzle distracts attention from the heart of the matter: Can a veteran of bedroom sports still find an enduring love? That question disappears down the Segalesque escape-hatch of the deadly disease. (Kirkus Reviews)