From Publishers Weekly
This fourth effort from British writer Winterson ( Sexing the Cherry ) is a high-concept erotic novelette, a Vox for the postmarital crowd. The narrator, a lifelong philanderer ("I used to think marriage was a plate-glass window just begging for a brick"), has fallen in love with Louise, a pre-Raphaelite beauty. Louise is unhappily married to a workaholic cancer researcher, so the narrator leads her into a sexually combative affair. This scenario seems obvious enough, but Winterson never reveals whether the narrator is male or female. Rather, she teases readers out of their expectations about women and men and romance: Louise calls the narrator "the most beautiful creature male or female that I have ever seen," and the narrator observes, "I thought difference was rated to be the largest part of sexual attraction but there are so many things about us that are the same." When the narrator breaks off the affair after learning that Louise has cancer--only her husband can cure her--the work turns into a eulogy for lost love. Winterson manipulates gender expertly here, but her real achievement is her manipulation of genre : the capacious first-person narration, now addressed to the reader, now to the lover, enfolds aphorisms, meditations on extracts from an anatomy textbook, and essayistic riffs on science, virtual reality and the art of fiction ("I don't want to reproduce, I want to create something entirely new"). "It's as if Louise never existed," the narrator observes, "like a character in a book. Did I invent her?" One wonders, as Winterson intends, and then wonders some more. For Louise--and the narrator's love for her--never seems quite real; in this cold-hearted novel love itself, however eloquently expressed, is finally nothing more than a product of the imagination. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Like Andre Breton's dizzying poem, "Ma Femme a la chevelure de feu de bois" ("my woman with her belly like the unfolding fan of days/... My woman with her swan's back buttocks"), the narrator of Winterson's ( Sexing the Cherry , LJ 2/15/90) new novel relentlessly celebrates the beauty of a beloved woman's body--but the trick here is that we do not know whether the narrator is a man or a woman. The story is minimal and not altogether original: a corrusive sensualist experiences many women but finally becomes obsessed with one, stealing her from her husband, only to discover that she has been guarding a terrible secret: she is threatened by a terminal illness. The fascination is the lush, plush language and the way two aspects of the physical--passion and bodily decay--are delicately interwoven. Not to everyone's taste, but serious readers and sensualists will enjoy. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/92.- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Winterson displays awe-inspiring control over her materials - over language - and a gift for the most searing insights into human nature." ?The Globe and Mail
"Fun, challenging, often astonishing." ?The Toronto Star
"Overall, the novel is a cleverly worked and lively meditation on finding love and being lovers, a book that leaves out neither the glory nor the limitations." ?The Kingston Whig-Standard
"More immediate and more accessible than anything Winterson has written before. The simple elegance of Written on the Body becomes the author's already impressive oeuvre wonderfully well." ?Calgary Herald
"Boldly explores that elusive language of love with characteristic versatility, wit and precision." ?The Montreal Gazette
"A gorgeous, intensely sensual novel that celebrates the most inescapable fact of human existence in all its beauty, pain and impermanence." ?The Vancouver Sun
"Winterson's writing, with all its vivid detail, startling intensity and aching intimacy, leaves an indelible impression." ?Now magazine
"As well written as it is intelligent, as funny as it is compelling." ?Xtra!
"A hymn of praise to erotic passion...the book has an unforgettable virtuosity. Winterson is an exciting writer. She has literary talent of a high order." ?Victoria Glendinning, Vogue, U.K.
"An ambitious work, at once a love story and a philosophical meditation...a work that is consistently revelatory about the phenomenon of love. Winterson has been compared to an unlikely pantheon of literary figures from Flannery O'Connor through Gabriel García Márquez...The hyperbole seems not only imprecise; it obscures the originality of her voice, her distinctive mix of romanticism and irony, erudition and passion." ?New York Times Book Review
"A comedy that delves deeply into our most sacred desires. A tragedy that reads like a playful narrative." ?San Francisco Chronicle
"The best evidence yet to [support] Gore Vidal's oft-quoted declaration that Winterson is 'the most interesting young writer I have read in twenty years'. She has once again proved to be a storyteller of compelling interest and exceptional grace." ?The Atlantic
"Moving and compassionate, a love letter as much as a love story." ?Harper's Bazaar
"We've all been there, done that, and read the book when it comes to broken hearts and love affairs gone wrong, but it's the way Winterson tells 'em that makes this particular love story so original and compelling." ?New Woman
"The most highly esteemed writer of her generation." ?The Guardian
"Written on the Body charts love with the fresh precision a mapmaker might bring to a new territory...With equally inventive imagery, the book celebrates the sublime joys of physical love...A love story that has no need to tell its name. Fruity and frank, tender and poetic - it's a gem." ?She, U.K.
"Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language....In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming." ?The Evening Standard, U.K.
"Often very funny, like a stand-up comic turn...Winterson, with characteristic and endearing effrontery, wants to take all the tired old language and make it new." ?The Observer, U.K.
"One of the most breathtaking novels of this year." ?The Good Book Guide, U.K.
Book Description
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.
From the Inside Flap
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.
Written on the Body ANNOTATION
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A new work of transfixing originality from Jeanette Winterson - 'a master of her material,' as Muriel Spark wrote in Vanity Fair, 'a writer in whom talent deeply abides' - and her most beguiling, intensely moving novel to date. Written on the Body is a love story. And it is, like all Winterson novels, a philosophical meditation, this time on the body: the body as physical phenomenon - blood and bones and organs - and the body as repository of our emotions and souls. The object is a married woman named Louise, and the narrator of the story is her lover, gender undeclared. At once ambiguous and riveting, the narrator's consciousness powers the reader beyond the need to identify its sex, and directly into love itself. The affair intensifies beyond anything either lover has ever known or hoped for, and Written on the Body is a visceral, hypnotic dissection of their passion and longing. What these two find in the end, staring love and death in the face, is an extraordinary knowledge of the human heart, and a world of infinite possibility.
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