Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson (review)

novelsaboutqueerpeople:

This was a serendipitous bookstore find that I heard of somewhere years ago. It centers on a girl, named Jeanette like the author, who is raised in an extremely strict religious Christian household, under the watchful eye of her overbearing mother. As a child, she firmly believes that she has been chosen by God and will grow up to become a missionary. This plan becomes somewhat rickety and eventually collapses when she finds herself attracted to two girls she has worked to bring into her church. Both times, the more-than-friendship is discovered (though I found myself confused as to how and by whom, especially as nothing untoward ever seems to happen) and Jeanette is proclaimed to be possessed by demons. The second time around, she is subjected to noticeable misogyny as well as homophobia and ends up leaving the church to strike out on her own.

Interwoven with the narrative are stories that Jeanette the character seems to relate to. They are not Bible stories but seem to be more along the lines of odd fairy tales. (One is about one of King Arthur’s knights searching for the Holy Grail, though I don’t know how exactly it fits into the actual legends.) On first read, though, I had a bit of trouble sussing out the underlying themes of these sub-stories and then comparing them to the events of Jeanette’s life. The titular oranges also appear frequently in the book and seem to be related to the way Jeanette’s mother views the world and raises her daughter.

I found the book a little confusing. I struggled to relate to Jeanette, possibly because her life revolves around her church and religion for three-quarters of the book. I’ve never been involved with organized religion at all, or wanted to be, so my experience was more of getting a window into the mind of someone very, very different from me than of finding someone I identified with. (Not that that’s such a bad thing — it was quite interesting, and a good brain stretch.) I would also have liked to see a few of the characters developed more, especially the girls Jeanette takes an interest in. So little space is devoted to her friendships/relationships with them that they almost seem to exist purely as catalysts.

In short, though, it was an interesting book. I just finished it a couple of hours ago, and I already find myself feeling the need to reread it in hopes of understanding it better. (I’ve just looked it up online… it seems it has a SparkNotes, a sure sign that someone out there considers it both of literary note and possibly tricky to grasp.)

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Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson. 1985.