Her first short story collection exhibits the multitude of talents that have made English novelist Jeanette Winterson not just admired but beloved by her many fans. There are the surprising, fresh little phrases minted expressly to convey the delicate realities of the made-up world. There's the humor, fierce and sly but always kind. There's the imagination that changes gender and historical epoch at whim, and does so convincingly; and the characters themselves, a sundry bunch of men and women not necessarily successful or commendable but always, somehow, likable. Best of all, by their very diversity, these stories reveal glimpses of the smart and enigmatic woman behind the work.

In "Atlantic Crossing," Winterson becomes a middle-aged businessman of the mid-20th century, accidentally assigned to share his second-class cabin with a young black woman on a transatlantic crossing. In the realm of event, little happens, but in its depth of perception and what it tells of the nuances of regret, the story is as rich as a novel in another writer's hands. A few scant pages later, Winterson becomes a kind of lost female Homer, telling Orion's story from Artemis's point of view: "When she returned she saw this huge rag of a man eating her goat, raw.... His reputation hung about him like bad breath." In "The Poetics of Sex," she creates a lesbian love story that evokes her characters' personalities as explicitly as their erotic pleasures. "The 24-Hour Dog," the story of a woman writer returning a puppy she had thought to adopt, is remorseless as a psychological thriller in the squirmy depths it plumbs: "I had made every preparation, every calculation, except for those two essentials that could not be calculated: his heart and mine." Read The World and Other Places twice, once for instruction, once for joy. --Joyce Thompson


From Publishers Weekly
The detached awareness of Winterson's characters, with their biblically informed psyches and receptivity to the paranormal, make the 17 stories of this collection more proverbial than narrative. When in her acknowledgments Winterson (Gut Symmetries) thanks those who have "bought or bludgeoned" them from her, she's quite right: there's nothing fulsome here. Her spare gestures reduce prose to an eerie elemental state. In "The 24-Hour Dog," the narrator's encounter with a two-month-old puppy purchased from a farmer transports her: "The Sistine Chapel is unpainted, no book has been written. There is the moon, the water, the night, one creature's need and another's response. The moment between chaos and shape and I say his name and he hears me." In other stories, such as "O'Brien's First Christmas," the alien intrudes in the form of a midnight visitation by a tutued fairy on a downcast shopgirl. The feminist allegory "Orion" recasts the myth of Artemis and her predatory paramour; "Disappearance I" imagines a futuristic dystopia in which sleep has become as taboo as red light sex. Though the aftertaste of this unflinchingly provocative and stringently witty collection is somewhat bitter, Winterson's stories reveal another facet of a writer much acclaimed for her virtuosity and complexity. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This work collects stories written over a 13-year period by Whitbread and E.M. Forster Award winner Winterson. A hallmark of her fiction is the avoidance of gender pronouns, resulting in a gender fluidity that permits a subversive reading of the seemingly conventional love story "O'Brien's First Christmas." "Orion" is a feminist retelling of the origin of the constellation; as expected, a tale of female victimization becomes one of revenge and empowerment. "The Poetics of Sex" is a graphic tale of passion between two women interspersed with condescending questions typically asked of lesbians. Winterson's afterword is instructive; part of the pleasure of reading the title story is imagining the bafflement of the editors of an American Express travel magazine, who, offended by her irony, refused to publish it. The stories are challenging and beautifully crafted, ranging from realistic to fantastical. Recommended for most collections.?Ina Rimpau, Newark P.L., NJCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Astringently playful stories, written over 12 years, by the Whitbread Awardwinning British novelist (Gut Symmetries, 1997, etc.). Though this first collection is brief, its authors talent isn't. Winterson's appetite for social criticism mingles confidently with her lyrical instinct to give us savagely rhythmic portraits of people lost in lives they'd much rather not have to inhabit. ``This is the story of Tom,'' begins the tale ``Newton,'' following Tom through a tight-lipped rant about the pitfalls of dwelling in a suburb whose diabolically conformist code of etiquette impels its non-hero to conceal ``my Camus in the fridge.'' (Of a neighbor who discovers it there: `Who is Albert K Mew?' She pronounced it like an enraged cat.) While Winterson attacks righteous insiders, she also batterspersuasivelyanomalous Tom and his ilk for the fecklessness of his chosen alienation. In other stories, the balance shifts toward seductive evocation and away from the author's tendency to travesty almost any convention. With ``Turn of the World,'' for instance, Winterson revises the fairy-tale genre by invoking the evolution of four islands. Her closing words are fleetly sensuous, if punctuated by wry observation: ``Naturally enough this island is stocked with lions . . . The lions are ruthless as money. The gold is snap-jawed.'' Although usually acerbically intelligent, her fiction is also capable of giving itself up entirely to sensory lavishness, as in ``The Poetics of Sex,'' a revel whose sections are framed by mischievous subtitles (``Were You Born a Lesbian?''). Winterson's yen for invention can as readily regale us with the details of an Edenic puppyhood (``The 24-Hour Dog'') as skewer Yuletide urges (``O'Brien's First Christmas''). Best of all, she seems willing to risk being misunderstood for the sake of taking choice imaginative lunges. Neither ``realistic'' nor ``surrealistic,'' but work that oddly alchemizes the virtues of both. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"One of our most brilliant, visionary storytellers." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Unforgettable…heartbreaking…hilarious.... A work to be savoured, to be read repeatedly, each reading revealing new depths, new complexities, and new insights." —National Post

"Heart-breakingly beautiful…awash in sensuous, colourful imagery." —The Edmonton Journal

"An awesome panorama [by] an original and thrilling writer…Compelling and wild." —The Independent

"A display of double-edged talent—[Her] first collection of short stories reaffirms her position as one of the great originals of her generation." —New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal


From the Trade Paperback edition.


Review
"One of our most brilliant, visionary storytellers." ?San Francisco Chronicle

"Unforgettable?heartbreaking?hilarious.... A work to be savoured, to be read repeatedly, each reading revealing new depths, new complexities, and new insights." ?National Post

"Heart-breakingly beautiful?awash in sensuous, colourful imagery." ?The Edmonton Journal

"An awesome panorama [by] an original and thrilling writer?Compelling and wild." ?The Independent

"A display of double-edged talent?[Her] first collection of short stories reaffirms her position as one of the great originals of her generation." ?New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson's delectable first novel, announced the arrival of 'a fresh voice with a mind behind it,' as Muriel Spark has written. 'She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent deeply abides'—and her reputation and accomplishment have grown with each of her five subsequent novels.

Now, with her first collection—seventeen stories that span her entire career—Jeanette Winterson reveals all the facets of her extraordinary imagination. Whether transporting us to bizarre new geog-raphies—a world where sleep is illegal, an island of diamonds where the rich wear jewelry made of coal—or revealing so perfectly, so exactly, the joy and pain of owning a brand-new dog, she proves herself a master of the short form.

For her readers, a celebration—and for everyone else, a wonderful introduction to this highly original and consistently daring writer, who has become 'one of our most brilliant, visionary storytellers' (San Francisco Chronicle)

FROM THE CRITICS

Lambda Book Report

The World and Other Places, Winterson's new short story collections, promises more linguistic and conceptual intrigue to riddle the reader and ensure that she thinks hard before turning the page. These stories are more than just a set of clever show-off literary gymanastics: they have the staying power inherent in all good literature.

Robert L. Pela - The Advocate

The wryly amusing fable The Three Friends and the sexually inventive The Poetics of Sex along with 15 other tales make a convincing case for the continuing health of Winterson's talent. This is storytelling at its most visceral and affecting.

Eric Lorberer - The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Fans of Jeanette Winterson's laconic prose will find much to enjoy in this author's first collection of short fiction. Culling stories from the last twelve years, this book shows that Winterson can sculpt her sentences precisely in the short form as she does in the novel. Winterson directs these stories to her readers with unerring aim.

Publishers Weekly

The detached awareness of Winterson's characters, with their biblically informed psyches and receptivity to the paranormal, make the 17 stories of this collection more proverbial than narrative. When in her acknowledgments Winterson (Gut Symmetries) thanks those who have "bought or bludgeoned" them from her, she's quite right: there's nothing fulsome here. Her spare gestures reduce prose to an eerie elemental state. In "The 24-Hour Dog," the narrator's encounter with a two-month-old puppy purchased from a farmer transports her: "The Sistine Chapel is unpainted, no book has been written. There is the moon, the water, the night, one creature's need and another's response. The moment between chaos and shape and I say his name and he hears me." In other stories, such as "O'Brien's First Christmas," the alien intrudes in the form of a midnight visitation by a tutued fairy on a downcast shopgirl. The feminist allegory "Orion" recasts the myth of Artemis and her predatory paramour; "Disappearance I" imagines a futuristic dystopia in which sleep has become as taboo as red light sex. Though the aftertaste of this unflinchingly provocative and stringently witty collection is somewhat bitter, Winterson's stories reveal another facet of a writer much acclaimed for her virtuosity and complexity. (Mar.)

Library Journal