From Publishers Weekly
Set on a train traveling through a dystopian future England, Winterson's latest novel is a patchwork meditation on identity and artistry. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Handel is a failed priest but abiding Catholic with elitist tendencies whose work as a doctor forces him to consider social questions that he would probably rather avoid. Picasso, as she calls herself, is a young artist who has been sexually abused by her brother but whose family thinks she is at fault for her dark moods. Sappho is, indeed, Sappho, the lesbian poet of ancient Greece, who here proclaims herself a sensualist and then proceeds to dissect "the union of language and lust." The three converge in a place that may be England in a not-too-distant future made ugly by pollution and even uglier by greed. This is not a novel but an extended rift on art, sex, religion, social repression, the dangers of patriarchy, and everything that is wrong with the contemporary drift to the right. As such, it will be hard going for most readers, but those with some patience will discover exceptionally evocative writing and a vivifying review of some much-discussed contemporary issues. Here, Winterson is even more unmoored than in her spectacular if discursive Written on the Body (LJ 2/15/93); what will she do next? For literary collections.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Each of Winterson's poetic, philosophical, and witty novels, from Sexing the Cherry (1990) to Written on the Body (1993), takes us by surprise, and her newest work is no exception. For instance, the characters in this metaphoric, historical, sensual, and often wrenching tale are named Handel, Picasso, and Sappho, but Handel is a doctor and Picasso a woman. Sappho is the much lauded yet vilified lyric poet of antiquity, but she also walks the streets of London at the bitter end of the twentieth century, and all three characters cross paths at odd or pivotal moments. The fourth character, the bawd alluded to in the title, is Doll Sneerpiece, the heroine of an old book Handel is reading on a train. This train, spanning the distance from the city to the sea, symbolizes time, just as a house is a metaphor for memory. As Winterson spins the intriguing, dramatic, and significant tales of each of her characters, she satisfies our craving for story but accomplishes so much more, articulating the meaning of time, art, passion, and hypocrisy in prose charged with the pulse and imagery of poetry. Donna Seaman

Review
"Winterson's most ambitious work...beautiful writing, shaped line by line into word sculptures....I salute Winterson's skill at word-turning and word-spinning, her ability to mint shining images in a few golden lines." ?The Independent on Sunday, U.K.

"Several leaps forward in sophistication and technique from The Passion, which won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize....a smooth-running...piece of machinery, which throws out... brilliant sparks." ?The Montreal Gazette

"Dazzling...truly exciting to read." ?The Times, U.K.

"Powerful." ?The Toronto Sun

"Winterson soars with Art and Lies." ?The Calgary Herald

"Expands the gender game...hurtles along so breathtakingly...Intriguing...Profound." ?Now magazine

"If words were diamonds and sentences necklaces, Jeanette Winterson would be the De Beers of literature." ?Entertainment Weekly


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Book Description
One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. "A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying."--Newsday.

From the Inside Flap
One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. "A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying."--Newsday.

ANNOTATION

One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. "A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying."--Newsday.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The novel brings together three apparently disparate figures on a single day in a single place - a high-speed train hurtling through the present or near-future (though the book itself ranges freely over the centuries). Handel is an ex-priest turned surgeon, a man whose humanity has been sacrificed to intellect. Picasso, a young woman cast out by the family that drove her to madness, is comforted only by her painting. And Sappho is the famed lesbian poet of antiquity, as alive as her immortal verse. Each is at once beguilingly symbolic and painfully real, alienated from a brutal technological world and united by Winterson's narrative, which directs them together towards a single end of satisfying inevitability. A story of lust, the unloved and loss, Art & Lies is also a jeremiad upholding the virtues of culture against the cold numbness of modern life. Erudite, impassioned, philosophical and, above all, daring, Winterson enfolds her characters in the ageless beauty of art - with a depth of feeling every bit as dazzling as her rich prose and fierce intellect.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly