Art eats itself. Jeanette Winterson clearly is a committed advocate of the importance of art over science. But I don't believe her! Without the framework of rigour that science brings to the world the internal decoration of art falls into an untidy mess of meaningless jargon on the floor. I have to say I struggled to find much to enjoy in this and only perservered because of its brevity. The Picasso and Handel sections speak coherently and with passion but the Sappho is pretentious twaddle. I can't say this directs me towards Jeanette Winterson's more celebrated works. ( )

.........................................: Art and Lies is in my humble opinion the best work of fiction (or is it?) I have ever read. It's dense, profoundly intertextual, and at times absolutely poetic. Please don't be fooled by Publius' obviously misguided review (for example, the comparison between Sophokles and Sappho is flawed from the start, and one might consider reading a bit about the historical reception of Sappho's work before making such bold statements); if Winterson will enter literary history as a footnote to a footnote, it will be one that disrupts the entire textual frame itself.

.........................................: Art and Lies is in my humble opinion the best work of fiction (or is it?) I have ever read. It's dense, profoundly intertextual, and at times absolutely poetic. Please don't be fooled by Publius' obviously misguided review (for example, the comparison between Sophokles and Sappho is flawed from the start, and one might consider reading a bit about the historical reception of Sappho's work before making such bold statements); if Winterson will enter literary history as a footnote to a footnote, it will be one that disrupts the entire textual frame itself.

This is probably up there in "favourite" along with Written on the Body (which couldn't be a higher compliment of a book for me). Three stories intermingle in the typical Winterson style. A treat. ( )

This is the reason i read everything else by her i could get my hands on, up to and including the editorials on her website. ( )