Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book. (19960828)
Written On The Body
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Written on The Body is a tender dissection of erotic love. The prose is like a poem, lush with wit and imagery, but behind the luxuriant relish of the words, there is a scalpel-sharp cut of emotions. Love and longing are the wounds through which Winterson's imagery flows. The novel begins with regret: "Why is the measure of love loss? It hasn't rained in three months ... The grapes have withered on the vine." The narrator is also suffering from a heart-stricken drought. She is grieving for the loss of her true love, Louise.
Louise has flowing Pre-Raphaelite hair, and a body besieged by leukaemia, her cells waging war: "here they come, hurtling through the bloodstream trying to pick a fight." But Louise is not dead, merely abandoned by the narrator with the best of intentions. As the lament continues, striking in its beauty and dazzling inventiveness, more of the love story is revealed. The narrator has been a female Lothario, falling in love, and out again, swaggering like Mercutio. But then she meets Louise, married to Elgin--"very eminent, very dull, very rich"--and is hopelessly, helplessly smitten: "I didn't only want Louise's flesh, I wanted her bones, her blood, her tissues, the sinews that bound her together." Elgin persuades her to leave for the good of Louise's health, and all is undone.
Winterson does not shy away from grief, or joy. She has acutely described how love can transform a life, but also destroy it too. But, for Winterson, where there is love there is hope: "I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world ... I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields." Eithne Farry
Review
"Winterson's novels are about exploding our complacent notions of the real, breaking down received ideas of gender, time and space... John Donne wrote, "Love...makes one little room, as everywhere." Winterson's novel arrives at a similar affirmation" (Time Out )
"An ambitious work, at once a love story and a philosophical meditation on the body...the result is a work that is consistently revelatory about the phenomenon of love" (New York Times Book Review )
"This book is a deep sensual plunge, a worship of the body, inside and out" (Guardian )
"An ambitious work, at once a love story and a philosophical meditation on the body...the result is a work that is consistently revelatory about the phenomenon of love" (New York Times Book Review )
"This book is a deep sensual plunge, a worship of the body, inside and out" (Guardian )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Phil O'Sofa
Format:Paperback
A beautifully written love story. Like other works I've read by this author, it is sometimes brilliant and sometimes less than that, but this is, for me, one of her easiest and most enjoyable novels. Much is made of the fact that we're never told if the narrator is male or female, but it could only really be a woman writing like this, which of course makes it a lesbian love affair. This is irrelevant in this book (don't bother buying this if you're looking for steamy lesbian sex) but I do sometimes wonder why such a high percentage of good writers just happen to be lesbians.
Well let's just be grateful for what they write. Jeanette Winterson is one of the best writers around today, and this is one of her best books.
Well let's just be grateful for what they write. Jeanette Winterson is one of the best writers around today, and this is one of her best books.
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I read this years ago knowing nothing about Jeanette Winterson and devoured it in one session. As a lesbian I identified the narrator as female and one I could really relate to. I have reread the book a number of times and find it multilayered and as beautiful as good poetry, the fact that so few things are spelt out and so much is hinted at appealed to me rather than the reverse. It is the only book of hers I love perhaps because of those things, perhaps because despite the fact she chooses not to be straightforward in style, I find so many of the things she writes about love and the experience of it deeply accurate. People are not simple and nor are lives, I found in her writing revelations on human nature that touched me, made me think hard, and ultimately changed some ignorances I had about myself forever. It is a passionate book about a passionate love and to my mind one of the most successfully done, especially in the lesbian field of literature.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is absolutely my favourite book ever. I've read it 100 times, and I always find something new there. The truths Winterson writes of love have the power to make me break down in tears, and I turn to this book again and again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enchanting, strange, and thought provoking.
We are sucked into the world of the narrator - but we never really learn who the narrator is. Man? Woman? Read more
Published 3 hours ago by nbx88
3.0 out of 5 stars
Quite a good read, but didn't quite live up to it's description.
Perfectly readable book, but wasn't quite as passionate as portrayed by others and seemed like a story from another era.
Published 1 month ago by Jenny McEwen
5.0 out of 5 stars
for assignment reading and anaylsis
have not finished reading this as yet but the cover is nice and I including this book two others by the same author which will look very nice on my book shelf received well before... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Ms. Amanda P. Blondel
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oh beautiful
This is a beautiful, beautiful story. The protagonist remains gender-neutral throughout... I bought this book just to lend it to friends who I know will connect with it as much as... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mike
5.0 out of 5 stars
The language of love
Written on the Body is the fourth book by Jeannette Winterson. It is written in first person by a narrator whose name, gender and age are never revealed to us. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Raine
3.0 out of 5 stars
Novel cobbled from journal notes
I usually love Jeanette Winterson and eagerly awaited receipt of this novel and but for some decidedly funny sections and areas of good writing especially in the front, it dwindled... Read more
Published on 10 Feb 2010 by Cl Smith
3.0 out of 5 stars
self-indulgent
I actually enjoyed this book but I felt that the writer was incredibly self-indulgent and a little pretentious, despite some fabulous imagery in places. Read more
Published on 23 Aug 2009 by HT
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding
This is honestly one of the best and most beautiful books I have ever read. Gorgeous prose.
It should move any romantic, and anyone who has been in (or is in) love will... Read more
It should move any romantic, and anyone who has been in (or is in) love will... Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2009 by Josephine Louise
5.0 out of 5 stars
beautiful
This is truly one of my favourite books. It is beautifully written, with so much insight and emotion. Read more
Published on 8 May 2006 by teary chocolate
5.0 out of 5 stars
Correction to the Amazon Review
I just wanted it noted that the amazon review is misleading. The major reason why this is well known in 'philosophical circles', particularly continental is that as one reader... Read more
Published on 4 Jun 2004
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