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Loading... Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)▾LibraryThing recommendations ▾Will you like it?
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 Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. ▾Work-to-work relationships
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| Epigraph |
'When thick rinds are used the top must be thoroughly skimmed, or a scum will form marring the final appearance.'
From The Making of Marmalade by Mrs Beeton.  'Oranges are not the only fruit.'
-- Nell Gwynn | |
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| Dedication |
For Gill Saunders and Fang the cat TO PHILLIPPA BREWSTER WHO WAS THE BEGINNING | |
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Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was written during the winter of 1983 and the spring of 1984. (Introduction) | |
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Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different. Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. She was Old Testament through and through. Not for her the meek and paschal Lamb, she was out there, up front with the prophets, and much given to sulking under trees when the appropriate destruction didn't materialise. Quite often it did, her will or the Lord's I can't say. I didn't know quite what fornicating was, but I had read about it in Deuteronomy, and I knew it was a sin. But why was it so noisy? Most sins you did quietly so as not to get caught. Whelks are strange and comforting.
They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly.
But they have a strong sense of personal dignity.
Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar, there is something noble about a whelk.
Which cannot be said for everybody. Uncertainty to me was like Aardvaark to other people. A curious think I had no notion of, but recognized through secondhand illustration. I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. The priest has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words, words of power. Words that are always on the surface. Words for every occasion. The words work. They do what they're supposed to do; comfort and discipline. The prophet has no book. The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning. The prophets cry out because they are troubled by demons. In those days, magic was very important, and territory, to start with, just an extension of the chalk circle you drew around yourself to protect yourself from elementals and the like. It's gone out of fashion now, which is a shame, because sitting in a chalk circle . . . is a lot better than sitting in the gas oven. Of course people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things, so there's no need to take it personally. Why will it work? It works because the principle of personal space is always the same, whether you're fending off an elemental or someone's bad mood. . . .
The training of wizards is a very difficult thing. Wizards have to spend years standing in a chalk circle until they can manage without it. They push out their power bit by bit, first within their hearts, then within their bodies, then within their immediate circle. It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space, it is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.
Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet. Families, real ones, are chairs and tables and the right number of cups; but I had no means of joining one, and no means of dismissing my own; she had tied a thread around my button, to tug when she pleased. | |
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Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to the English one. Ook o.d.t.: Sinaasappels en demonen | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (1)
▾LibraryThing members' description ▾Book descriptions Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0802135161, Paperback)
Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God’s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles. (retrieved from Amazon Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:11:17 -0400) (see all 3 descriptions) ▾Library descriptions The coming-of-age story of Jess, the adopted daughter of a deeply religious woman, who grows up isolated and insulated in the north of England in the 1960's. Jess meets Melanie, and the two teenagers fall in love, greatly upsetting Jess's mother and her congregation.… (more) » see all 2 descriptions |
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I loved the way that Jeanette, an unquestioning little girl, living in a world of fire and brimstone, slowly discovers the world on her own terms, forging herself a strong and indomitable persona, which will have her both cast out and reborn.
The humour, however, is what makes this novel exceptional: it could have been a dark tale of rejection and close-mindedness, but the quirky, and rather generous, tone turns it into a likable, forgiving story. (