Cressida Connolly

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

In the 26 years since the publication of her highly acclaimed first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has proved herself a writer of startling invention, originality and style. Her combination of the magical and the earthy, the rapturous and the matter-of-fact, is unique. It is a strange and felicitous gift, as if the best of Gabriel Garcia Marquez was combined with the best of Alan Bennett. At her finest, (in which category I’d put The Passion, Sexing the Cherry and Lighthousekeeping) there is no one to match her.

The title of this memoir comes from the mouth of Mrs Winterson of Accrington, Lancs, the author’s adoptive mother. This is what she replied when her young daughter told her that she was in love with another girl, and happy. It is a testament to the subtlety and control of Jeanette Winterson’s prose that this monstrous woman, who, by her coldness and her madness and her misery, caused her only child such dreadful suffering, emerges from these pages as a figure of dark comedy, even of pathos.

Mrs Winterson loved Jesus, but he brought her no joy: ‘Jesus was supposed to make you happy but he didn’t, and if you were waiting for the apocalypse that never came, you were bound to be disappointed.’ In a state of constant rebuke, Mrs Winterson prayed and smoked (in secret) and stayed up all night, so as to avoid the marital bed. She had two sets of false teeth, matt for everyday, and a pearlised set for ‘best’. Other than the bible and one or two other texts, books were forbidden. Every day there was church, all day on Sundays. There was no cuddling, no laughter. Mrs Winterson was ‘a relentless brooding mountain range’ a ‘flamboyant depressive’ whose complaining was a ‘life-long soliloquy’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in