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Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit Paperback – 5 Sep 1991

by
Jeanette Winterson (Author)
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Jeanette Winterson (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars 237 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 171 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (5 Sept. 1991)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0099935708
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099935704
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.5 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (237 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 7,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon Review

Jeanette, the protagonist of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and the author's namesake, has issues--"unnatural" ones: her adopted mam thinks she's the Chosen one from God; she's beginning to fancy girls; and an orange demon keeps popping into her psyche. Already Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiographical first novel is not your typical coming-of-age tale.

Brought up in a working-class Pentecostal family, up North, Jeanette follows the path her Mam has set for her. This involves Bible quizzes, a stint as a tambourine-playing Sally Army officer and a future as a missionary in Africa, or some other "heathen state". When Jeanette starts going to school ("The Breeding Ground") and confides in her mother about her feelings for another girl ("Unnatural Passions"), she's swept up in a feverish frenzy for her tainted soul. Confused, angry and alone, Jeanette strikes out on her own path, that involves a funeral parlour and an ice-cream van. Mixed in with the so-called reality of Jeanette's existence growing up are unconventional fairy tales that transcend the everyday world, subverting the traditional preconceptions of the damsel in distress.

In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson knits a complicated picture of teenage angst through a series of layered narratives, incorporating and subverting fairytales and myths, to present a coherent whole, within which her stories can stand independently. Imaginative and mischievous, she is a born storyteller, teasing and taunting the reader to reconsider their worldview. --Nicola Perry

Review

"She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides" (Vanity Fair)

"Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming" (Evening Standard)

"An novel that deserves revisiting...Winterson maintains a balance of tone, a trueness of voice... It remains one of the finest things Winterson has written" (Observer)

"Still extraordinary, still brilliant" (Metro)

"Even at a time when so many good and interesting novels are coming out, hers stand out as performances of real originality and extraordinary promise" (John Bayley)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsorgasmic poetry
By A Customer on 19 Oct. 2003
Format: Paperback
'One of my earliest memories is me sitting on a sheep at Easter while she told me the story of the Sacrificial Lamb. We had it on Sundays with potato'.
This is just one of the many brilliantly quirky remarks of Jeanette that sparkle throughout Oranges. What so stands her apart from other modern writers in this novel is her signature frank style of writing - a refreshingly clean and matter-of-fact narrative, yet so flawlessly precise and so perfectly encapsulating of the emotions behind different experiences in life. Jeanette's idiosyncratic writing is one where every sentence shines with unadulterated beauty and raw poetic force. Her rare sensitivity and affinity with words and language itself is more than amazing - it is magical.
Oranges is more than Jeanette's autobiography weaven amidst fairytale myths and parables. It is more than a story about the struggle between religion and sexuality. It is the the story of all of us, it is our story. The betrayal of parental figures, the driving force of budding sexuality, the mixture of indifference and indignance towards an ex-lover, the innate loyalty to family deep within, all these are passages of life we all walk through, yet how often is it so penetratingly and unforgettably recorded in a chronicle that will be read again and again for many generations to come. Jeanette is the voice of a generation crying out for independence and the need to be true to our hearts; she is the hidden voice of all of us.
That perhaps is what really makes Oranges so special and personal, that behind Jeanette's dazzling prose we hear our story, our voice.
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5.0 out of 5 starsFor the serious DIY French home owner
By A Customer on 21 Jun. 2004
Format: Paperback
Some books on renovation are helpful, but having leafed through most of them I can tell you that Renovating and Maintaining Your Home in France is a real 'one-stop wonder' and without a doubt is the best and most comprehensive book available about renovating French property with masses of diagrams and photos, technical words you will need to know, and a really wide-ranging coverage of likely problems. Well done Survival Books, you helped us to find a property with Buying a House in France, now let's see if you can do it up for us!
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4.0 out of 5 starsMagical Memoir
By Simon Savidge Reads on 9 Mar. 2011
Format: Paperback
It is hard to decide if `Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit' is a memoir or a piece of fiction, not that the label should matter as it's a corking read, so I think the best way is to say it's a mixture of the two. We are told the story of Jeanette as a young girl growing up under the fierce some and ever watchful eye of `Mrs Winterson' her highly religious mother who has already decided that her adoptive daughter will become a missionary. However the problem with that is two fold. Firstly her daughter, whilst having respect for the church, has a mind of her own and rather strong wills. Secondly, which we discover as we read on, her daughter is one who suffers from the `Unnatural Passions' and falls in love with someone of the same sex.

Being Jeanette Winterson's debut novel it would be easy to simply label this work as `writing what you know' and yet it is so much more than that. The character of Mrs Winterson whilst being a retelling of her mother has a slight fairytale like `wicked stepmother' to it. In fact as the book goes on Winterson inserts small tales starting `once upon a time...' as we go on giving the whole book a slightly magical feel. Her domineering yet quiet tyranny over Jeanette's childhood could have lead Jeanette to become a down trodden doormat. Instead a small fire sparks somewhere and we see a young girl both caught in conflict between religion and sexuality and also pushed on by it.

I wasn't expecting to laugh as much as I did through the novel. This is no misery memoir, though of course its labelled fiction, and whilst in parts it is harrowing (I admit I was petrified of Mrs Winterson often, especially when she did things quietly) there is a lot of joy and hope in the novel.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsa first rate study guide
By A Customer on 20 Jun. 2002
Format: Paperback
This is a very helpful and well-written guide to this novel, which gives lots of interesting background information about the author and her works, as well as offering insight into the book itself. It made me look at a number of aspects of the novel in different and deeper ways - as a result I considered angles and ideas I would not have come up with on my own. I was particularly grateful for info about the biblical references JW makes.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThis book will stretch your mind
By A Customer on 6 Mar. 2000
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Jeanette Winterson has written a powerful novel which will challenge the reader on many different levels. Its treatment of the lifestory to young adulthood of a non-conformist woman is so real you can touch the emotion. The layering of one story on another demonstrates Miss Winterson's marvellous technique as a novelist, whilst the way she weaves the Pentateuch into her plot will send you racing to check the original! A great read and well worth a deeper look.
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3.0 out of 5 starsThe curse of the inter chapter.
By Valentine Gersbach on 11 Dec. 2011
Format: Paperback
I've picked this novel up a few times and rejected it as reading matter because of fears that the rather stern earnestness of the author exhibited on various review shows down the years might have produced a dour account of an oppressed childhood rather than a good read.In the end, I was suprised by mix of verbal dexterity and earthy wit that would have done Victoria Wood or even Les Dawson credit.The antics of the central character's ludicrous mother and her crazy Lancashire sect dragged me in immediately and kept me quite happy until repetition of a cycle of rebellion against social and sexual repression followed by punishment by the sect became sadly tedious.

The other rather trying element of the novel is the use of fairy tale or Arthurian interchapters employed, I suppose, to add some kind of psychological depth to the main business of the novel. I tried with the first couple of these and then gave them up through a mixture of incomprehension and wanting to get back to the knockabout stuff in the main storyline.I can see that "Oranges" would have been a very slim volume without these worthy moments of poetic introspection but I could well have done without them.

So, in the end, I enjoyed most of what I read and will look more fondly on Jeanette Winterson when I next see or hear her holding forth on TV or radio but if I try another of her novels, I'll hope for more Les and less Arthur.
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