Book eighteen of my bookish Advent calendar brings a book which is, and then again is not, a biography. It’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. The book is presented as a biography and the facts align with those of the author’s life but she has been clear in the past that it is a fictionalised account of her childhood. She later wrote Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal ? which covers a lot of the same ground but is an actual biography. I have read both books in the past although I don’t seem to own a copy of either at the moment.
The author’s story is about her upbringing in Lancashire with parents who were strict and fundamentalist believers. There appears never to be a meeting of minds between herself and her mother and this is evident in both books. The situation is not helped when Jeanette realises in her teens that she is a lesbian which her parents cannot accept. The tone of this book is bitterness about her childhood and especially about her mother but it’s beautifully written and she manages to show clearly all the contradictions and bewilderment of growing up.
I don’t own a copy of this book so I shall pop this copy on my biography shelf as I may pick it up again in the future.
The copy I have been sent is a thin hardbacked edition which again has come from the Emery Library at Ratcliffe College (see here for the first book I have received from the same place). It’s in excellent condition except that under the title on the title page someone has written “Shit really ?” in pen. I wonder who they were and why they felt that they had to do this but it amused me when I saw it.
Anne Is Reading 