Read for school and gah...If I had been reading it for me I wouldn't have finished it. I don't really do post-modern literature. Honestly to many segue ways into god knows what. Not to mention the religiousness and well. Really I couldn't stand it. And now I have to figure out what the theme of the book is for class. This should be fun...NOT. ( )

What a refreshingly odd book about a young girl growing up in an evangelical household in England and awakening to the fact that she is a lesbian...and there are lots of interesting sidebars and fables and colorful characters and every so often you run across something like this: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 of that you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something that you do not understand is the true nature of evil.It's quirky, but recommended. ( )

What a refreshingly odd book about a young girl growing up in an evangelical household in England and awakening to the fact that she is a lesbian...and there are lots of interesting sidebars and fables and colorful characters and every so often you run across something like this: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 of that you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something that you do not understand is the true nature of evil.It's quirky, but recommended. ( )

What a refreshingly odd book about a young girl growing up in an evangelical household in England and awakening to the fact that she is a lesbian...and there are lots of interesting sidebars and fables and colorful characters and every so often you run across something like this: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 of that you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something that you do not understand is the true nature of evil.It's quirky, but recommended. ( )

I loved this book- humor, tragedy, and above all, as I found with other Winterson books, the REAL quality of the characters shine through effortlessly. There are parts of this book that I want to share with everyone I know. ( )

A thoroughly well written novel on the step daughter of a northern working class religious fanatic a how she comes to terms with her mother and her sexuality. ( )

Jeanette's adoptive mother is a religious nutter who is married to a pleasant, ineffectual man. She brings Jeanette up to be a missionary and Jeanette has quite a talent for preaching but none for getting on with the irreligious. She falls in love with Melanie and is discarded by her church. One of Jeanette's dilemmas is whether to stay near her family and former religious friends or to escape her old life altogether. The alternatives are ilustrated by odd fairytales. Another fairytale clarifies Jeanette's confusion about the religious need to be perfect. A sad and funny book. ( )

On p161 out of the 176 pages of this novella, Winterton states "Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception." And ain't that the truth. I haven't read a novel so fuelled by vitriol for a long while. This was written out of pain, frustration, anger, hurt, angst, rebellion and a host of other jolly emotions. As such, it's hard to come away with it feeling much positive.

The subject matter is difficult: religiously-fuelled sexual prejudice against lesbianism. The problem is that, like most books that try to counteract prejudice, the novel comes off just as prejudiced as those they are lambasting. Winterton is no exception and that, I feel, is the weakness of this novel if it was her intention to create empathy for her own and others' situations...

Read the rest of this review at Arukiyomi. ( )

I read this book some ten years ago and found it boring. Maybe I'll change my mind if I read it today? However, I doubt it. ( )

Very very funny. ( )

A darkly humourous and macabre semi-autobiographical tale pulled between the two force fields of 'Winter soon' and 'Middlemarch' with all the hope and the weight of history that implies when journeying between the old world and the new. ( )

It's been a long time since I read this. Maybe I should give it another try. I loved the series, but had trouble getting into the book. I found the plot was slightly unbalanced and sordid. The screenplay added more light to the story and removed some disturbing aspects from Miss Jewsbury's character. Then again towards the end of the story I found the book more satisfactory than the tv-version, I guess, because it's more realistic. The rawness I disliked when the main character was young, seems very appropriate here. ( )

"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."

An odd mixture of semi-autobiography and fairy tale parables, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit reflects Winterson's experiences of growing up in a dour Northern English town, attempting to reconcile the faith of her devout evangelical parents with her growing awareness of her sexuality. Winterson's prose is beautiful, compassionate and amusing and melancholy, and she has a gift for capturing quirky characters in a handful of words. There are flaws: in a novel this short, it's hard to give true depth to all your characters, and I didn't feel I got a true sense of what Jeanette should want for herself, what she would aim for, beyond the confines of the story. Some of the fairy tale sections, too, seem to wander off into true tangents at times. Yet I think it all combines to create a very sharp meditation on identity and self, on what it means to come into your own. ( )

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a semi-autobiographical story of a girl growing up in a Pentecostal church as a lesbian. Winterson tells her own story through a sparse, straightforward narrative, and interweaves fairy tales throughout for a greater depth. It's an interesting memoir(?) if you've read her other novels, but as a story on its own it's very brief and may not capture everyone's interest. ( )

An odd little book about a girl who is adopted by religious fanatic mother and discovers she is attracted to the other girls she saves and brings into the church. Her mother "outs" her for her "unnatural passions" during a church service and she leaves the church and her home. ( )

The first part was excellent, but the ending kind of ruined the experience for me. The three (?) parallel stories were clearly symbolic, but they robbed the book of its brilliant narrative and the half a star I would have given it without it. ( )

This was a simple story that didn't particularly draw me in. The point seemed more to explore feminist ideas than to tell a story, and it came across as varying between being far too simple and far too heavyhanded in the messages the author wanted to get across. It's a quick read, and not bad, but there's not much here to draw me into recommending it. I'd say that if the story sounds interesting, read the first few chapters--you should know by then whether or not this one's for you, but it's definately one that's more a matter of taste and ideal than what's actually accumulated in the story itself. ( )

A curious mixture of stories and semi-autobiography which come together to shape the life of Jeanette, the adopted daughter of a church-obsessed mother and a quiet, dominated father. Oranges are not the Fruit traces Jeanette teenage years, growing up in a northern town in a community in which she never quite fits, despite her talent for preaching and her wildly imaginative ideas. The structure of the novel, skirting and spiralling between an disjointed biographical narrative and other stories which shape Jeanette's development, suits perfectly what is a gritty discourse on the nature of personality, history and memory and the importance of perspective in developing all three. And at the same time, it's an engaging, if sometimes distressing, story too.

'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit' is a touching story about Jeannette, a young woman who tries to arrange her sexual preference for women with her life inside a strict Christian sect. The book is written with Jeannette as a first person narrator and tells more or less her life from her early childhood to the day, she returns home, after she had been casted out for her deviant sexuality.
The narration is especially close to the end laced with two different stories, that of Sir Parceval on his journey to find the Holy Grail and that of Winnet, a girl who has some dealings with a wizard of some sorts.

The language is easily understood, nothing to fancy. But the more time passes within the narration, the more difficult gets it to follow all the things happening in Jeannette's life, especially since some parts are simply omitted. It was also rather hard to imagine when the story was supposed to take place - ultimately my bet may be some time after the second world war, maybe mid fifties, early sixties? And well, in my humble opinion, there was just too much religion and religious motivated restrictions. I know I wouldn't have stood this much. ( )

Winterson's first, and I sometimes think, her best. Fictionalised account of her childhood, adopted by a woman belonging to one of those strange religious brethen sects, realising she is a lesbian etc. Brilliantly written, very funny at times ( )

Jeannette is adopted by Evangelical Christians in the North of England and soon learns that their religion can not reconcile itself with her love of another woman. A unique exploration of evangelical and alternative lifestyles. ( )

Good style and interesting themes, a few truly well written and touching passages, but I don't know what to make of the many digressions and fictional / fantastic interludes. They don't integrate well within the narrative and therefore 'Oranges' is a rather disrupted, confused read. But the memoir passages are compelling and the chapter construction mimicking the Bible is an original and well-managed feature. ( )

Astounding. Spiralling feminist ecriture (of a kind) which seems to have read my sad male mind. Gripping, merciful and blissful. Shame about the (pants) introduction. ( )

I will admit that I only skimmed it, but I never felt I HAD to sit down and give it a lot of time. Take a dab of Sons and Lovers, throw in some Emma with a sexual twist, and some damn fine writing. I think this is the book she had to write to get to the really great books she had in her. ( )

Read this in one sitting on the day it came out. A new, fresh voice telling a slightly surreal but somehow more realistic than usual story of childhood and growing up. Amusing in places, and just a pleasing book all round, worth enjoying because Winterson never managed to achieve this standard of writing again and all her other books are pretty poor. This one though, stands the test of both time and comparison, and will entertain you and with substance. ( )