One of the many benefits of having a Most Awesome Girlfriend who is getting her Teacher’s degree in English, is having access to a bookcase full of books I probably would never have sought out myself. Like Jeanette Winterson‘s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
Oranges tells the story of a young girl who is adopted by a religious zealot, and brought up to be an evangelist missionary. She’s very successful in bringing converts into the church, until she meets this one girl. Which, of course, doesn’t go over very well with her mother and the rest of the congregation.
I was warned that this novel would tick me off big time, on account of the religious ass-hattery it describes. But it didn’t, as I can’t really get into that mode anymore. Instead, I really got into the writing itself, as there were some pretty turns of phrase.
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.
It’s things like this, and It’s always the same with diversions; you get involved.
, and a story about a girl trying to find out who she is, that tick my boxes.
- Book read
- Jeanette Winterson — Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
- First Line
- Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father.