Our favourite part of the Mid Sussex Reading Challenge has been hearing about your chosen books, and in our latest review, Amy from Haywards Heath shares her views on Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. It’s an experimental book about a genderless narrator who falls in love with a married woman – and it won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction in 1993.
Read on for Amy’s review!
Written on the Body exquisitely captures being drunk in love and lost in howling grief, and balancing them both considers what it means to love. It is written with strong, uncompromising language, very rich and not to everyone’s taste, but delicious and searing. Winterson is always funny and jokes land like hitting nails on the head.
Written on the Body pushes the limits of reality and truth and storytelling. It examines love and our beloved at a microscopic level. It is written from the perspective of a narrator whose gender is unknown and not actually relevant, which is an intriguing position when the performance of sexuality and gender seems so central to how we understand love in these times. It’s about creating worlds within and being created by love and our beloved. It’s about being annihilated by them. Written on the Body is a book for lovers that absolutely aches.
“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.”
Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson
Written on the Body is available to borrow for free from your local library. Reserve your copy here!
We’d love to hear about the books you’ve enjoyed recently! Keep us updated by sending in your own review, sharing your reads in our Facebook group or tweeting us @WSCCLibraries using the hashtag #MidSussexReadingChallenge.
If you’re not ready for the reading challenge to end, the good news is – it doesn’t have to! Anyone and everyone is warmly invited to join the Adur and Worthing Reading Challenge 2021 to follow twelve reading prompts over twelve months and keep the conversation about reading going. Find out more and sign up here.
The views expressed in this review are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of West Sussex Libraries.
Mid Sussex Reading Challenge 2020 