Product Description

'There is no such thing as autobiography, there is only art and lies'. Set in a London of the near future, its three principal characters, Handel, Picasso and Sappho, seperately flee the city and find themselves on the same train, drawn to one another through the curious agency of a book. Stories within stories take us through the unlikely love-affairs of one Doll Sneerpiece, an 18th century bawd, and into the world of painful beauty where language has the power to heal. "Art And Lies" is a question and a quest: How shall I live?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #281570 in Books
• Published on: 1995-05-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Jeanette Winterson's novel Arts & Lies begins with three people seated opposite each other on a train as it winds out of a city, making its way past cemeteries and houses towards the sea. Handel, a Catholic doctor, clutches a book, worrying at the edges of his medical mistakes. Picasso, a young woman with a consuming desire to paint, runs from abuse by her brother, with his "bull's balls and Lucifer rod". Sappho, seducer of women, carries her whirling words of poetry quietly at her side. Art & Lies intimately unravels the stories of these three. Although strangers, their memories touch and dance, circling a handful of events in which they have met (unbeknown to them) as the carriages of the train flit in and out of the sunlight.

At times the writing is impenetrable--there are paragraphs of French, Latin and German, a section of a Strauss opera and an impossibly demanding twist on language that feels mannered and fragmented. Often though, there is a lyrical intensity, a poetic eroticism to reward the struggle. There is also a light-heartedness; Winterson's particular, peculiar sense of fun, seen at its best in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and Sexing the Cherry asserts itself here in the raunchy narrative of Isaac Newton's prostitute that leaps up from the pages of Handel's book. Art & Lies is one of Winterson's most ruthless experimentations with literary form that shows her at her exuberant best and worst. --Jane Honey

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

A perfect book
This is a perfect book. A total book. One may not always agree with Winterson's constant assertions, but one is certainly made to think. It is very powerful and makes some of the most fascinating links between history and future that i have ever come across. It made me laugh, cry and, most importantly, think. It's hard work at first (& a little confusing) but well worth it in the end. Winterson is a genius.Read it.

Immerse yourself in beauty
This is one of my favourite books ever - and I have even got Winterson to sign my well thumbed copy. It is beautiful, emotional and clever. Some may say too clever, but I say enjoy it... don't worry if you can't understand all of it - treat it like a poem, a piece of music or painting and enjoy the experience. Meaning abounds from this book. For anyone looking for that hidden depth in life, this book is for you.

one of the best novels I have ever read.
The quotes that Winterson writes are insightful into the minds of young women, and the range of emotions that they go through. My first girlfriend began reading it to me and then she gave me her copy, and I fell in love with her more that I had to go and get a copy that I could underline, and recite. I have given the book to two women who were important to me, fellow Catholics, who are just as disallusioned by the church as I am. "Catholics are encouraged to express their emotions as long as the emotions they express are Catholic ones." I am also in the medical field so the phrases from Handel I found to be especially true. I would highly reccomend it to anyone who wanted to explore the vastness dicotomy of the church, medicine, art and lies.