Top reviews

• 

  Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson

  Played out in seventeenth century England with a lumbering giantess – as grotesque as she is immense – and a her child, Jordan – a quiet observer – as the main protagonists, this handsomely covered title is slight in size, however its diminutive nature is more than deceptive, for not only it is compact, it is also a concentration of what is a novel of gracefully profound observation set off by lyrical prose that seem to glide and dance into the reader’s consciousness.

  Indeed, the beauty of the cover boasts nothing of the contents of what is both a fine and well-researched work of charmed fancy. Loaded full with – but not consumed by – deprivations and depravity, fanciful excess and decadence in both the prose, its symbolism and the visualization it induces, this elegant work of fiction is an observance of the both the influence of conviction and the weight of invention that Winterson carries.

  Complex and original in style this eccentric novel flips perceptions of the real against that of the fanciful as if it were a coin trick. Equally so, the readers’ concepts of time and of truth are juxtaposed in imaginatively contrived complexity. Here Winterson’s warped fabric of reality elegantly weaves its thread through the tale as the story and history of its central characters unfurls.

  Like the fruit referenced in the title this publication is both exotic and sumptuous in it use of metaphor. Certainly, in Sexing the Cherry, Winterson’s conceit as a writer is to beguile the senses with acute and rich observations that rebound from history to the present day. And as her backlist titles readily suggest, the content of this novel is similarly fabricated out of her predilection for many of life’s primary fixations: love and sex; emotional ties; lies and ultimate truths...

  Quirky, bright, elegant and strong; read this work for yourself and be transported into a gritty and detritus ridden world interlaced and coloured by the stuff of fairytales recanted: where girls dance until their shoes give way; where beauty is a pot-marked face on an abomination of nature; and where the import of exotic fruits - the banana and the first pineapple being prime examples - cause sexual sensationalism!

  Review by Helen Frosi on 14:04, 04 Apr 2008

  Do you agree? (Agreements: 0, Disagreements: 0)

What's your view? Write a review for Sexing the Cherry