Product Description

In a fantastic world that is not 17th-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. Rescued by the Dog Woman, a murderous gentle giant, the baby soon grows up to discover that the strangest wonders are the ones spun out of his own head. "Fuses history, fairy tale, and metafiction into a fruit . . . of a memorably startling flavor".--"New York Times Book Review".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63955 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780802135780
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Evoking modern physics and antique metaphysics, Winterson's ambitiously eccentric narrative challenges her readers to rupture the boundaries of conventional perceptions and linear experience of time. Her narrative voices, alternating between a Rabelaisian giantess and her foundling son, collapse at times into one another and the characters plunge vertiginously through time and space. On the one hand reworking fairy tales, and on the other evoking the filth, squalor and exuberant bawdiness of 17th-century England in the throes of civil war, Winterson ( The Passion ) eventually locates her characters in present-day London. Graced with striking similes and poetic cadences, the author's prose is clean and strong, and the disjunctive elements of her narrative are integrated elegantly. But the novel's freakish characters and flights of surreal fancy are insufficient to redeem its overwrought artifice. The work is further limited by its stridently dogmatic feminism, which, contemptuously belittling all men as arrogantly stupid bullies who are vastly women's inferiors in maturity and moral fiber, vitiates its ostensible intent to transcend the narrowness of human perception.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Bizarre images and bawdy laughter galvanize this splendid English farce about a prodigious giantess and her explorer son in 17th-century London. Jordan fetches the first pineapple to the court of Charles II, while his mother, The Dog Woman, wreaks vengeance upon Puritans in a brothel. The plague; the flying princesses who defy laws of the courts and gravity; Jordan's travels to the floating city and the botanical wonders of the New World--the tale nips easily in and out of history and fantasy. The two characters eventually merge into the grievously polluted life of modern London. Metaphors abound with polemics on environmental concerns and politics of past and present. Not for the Jackie Collins set: readers need a background in surrealism to follow this story.
- Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Read it and marvel. Jeanette Winterson's voice is startlingly poetic and original, and her imaginative feats are utterly dazzling." ?Cosmopolitan

"Sexing the Cherry is fun, challenging, often astonishing. I wholeheartedly recommend it." ?The Toronto Star

"A life-enhancing, gratifying book. Winterson's use of language is superb.... She has a beautiful clear voice." ?Quill & Quire

"Jeanette Winterson is a remarkable writer." ?The Bookseller

"The most interesting young writer I have read in twenty years." ?Gore Vidal

"Sexing the Cherry is fun, challenging, often astonishing. I wholeheartedly recommend it." ?The Toronto Star

"Read it and marvel. Jeanette Winterson's voice is startlingly poetic and original, and her imaginative feats are utterly dazzling." ?Cosmopolitan

"A life-enhancing, gratifying book. Winterson's use of language is superb.... She has a beautiful clear voice." ?Quill & Quire

"Jeanette Winterson is a remarkable writer." ?The Bookseller

"Reading Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry is like discovering a new dance. The rhythms and steps are innovative. The language often has a punch of a tabloid headline with the precision of poetry. And the idea of time ? past, present and future ? can turn on a dime." ?The Ottawa Citizen

"It simply needs to be read and re-read." ?The Times

"Simple prose shows the subtlest of minds behind it, swift, confident and dazzling." ?Financial Times

"Winterson is a superb literary acrobat. She makes us believe, for the duration of her tall tales, in the power of imagination to change the way we perceive, and therefore live our lives." ?The Independent -- Review

Customer Reviews

Sexing the Cherry
One of the first things that struck me about this book is how it was so similar to Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando'. Both books are based on the premise that time is flexible, rather than a linear progression, and both combine fantastical elements with historical fiction. They even both use the Thames as an allegory for main themes. Whether this similarity will put off other readers, I don't know, but I felt that it did not detract from the merit of 'Sexing the Cherry'.

This is foremostly a grown-ups fairy tale - there are dancing princesses, a giant woman, magic, towns dying of love. Set (mainly) in England at the time of Cromwell, the tale is told in alternating sections by Dog-Woman (the giant woman) and Jordan. Dog Woman, who is a loner living with her many dogs, discovered Jordan as a child on the bank of the Thames. They have some amazing experiences, though this is what you would expect to happen to such an amazing woman. This is a grown-up's fairy tale in that there is a lot of sex and violence (this book is not for the squemish!) Winterson explores some very 'heavy' topics, such as the construction of identity and reality, and the realities of time. However, this doesn't read as a deep book - it is beautifully written in places, and could be enjoyed for the prose alone.

There are modern day characters included in this story, and I didn't feel that this worked as well as the historical characters. However, this is a very good book. It is not particulary long, so even if you don't enjoy it, at least you haven't wasted your time wading through a thick tome! I would definately suggest that anyone interested gives it a go.

fabulesque!
It's been a few months since I read this book, but I want to comment on it and correct a few earlier comments made by others. The setting is neither medieval nor Elizabethan; it is the Cromwellian and Restoration periods of the mid-17th century in England, if indeed it is anywhere concrete at all. The story's hero, Jordan, weaves in and out of time and myth, encountering the wonders of the new world and the Twelve Dancing Princesses of the fairytale (each of whom have the opportunity to describe their failed marriages, some in surprisingly - suspiciously - modern ways). His foster-mother, The Dog Woman, is an astounding creation. Winterson manages to whimsically weave all these threads together; however, this book doesn't *quite* rate a 10. Most readers will be a bit bewildered by the time-travel near then end, and one certainly smells a Woolf in retrospect, but the trip is so much well-crafted and linguistically compelling fun that they shouldn't mind. One does not, after all, ask a magician how they do t

Wonderfully written, inventive, imaginative journey in time!
"Thinking about time is to acknowledge two contradictory certainties: that our outward lives are governed by the seasons and the clock; that our inward lives are governed by something much less regular -- an imaginative impulse cutting through the dictates of daily time, and leaving us free to ignore the boundaries of here and now and pass like lightning along the coil of our time, that is, the circle of the universe and whatever it does or does not contain." -Jane Winterson

This work is an exploration of fantasy and reality -- and of which may be which. Starting out at a certain point in time, veering backwards and forwards from that point, and all along the way, sampling little vignettes about the situation at that point and of how fantasies might come to bear. What a magical journey of discovery there is in this wonderfully written work. What sparkling characters there are inside, with multi-faceted dimensions to each one. What a thought-provoking odyssey this book is, and what a fresh way to present these travels.

This author is exquisitely talented, and is eminently capable of producing wonderfully beautiful prose. Reading her words is a joy in and of itself. Her settings are bold, her characters are compelling, and she does not fill either her pages or her plots with minutia. This work is very much like an opera -- breathtakingly beautiful arias abound, strung together with plot-enhancing threads which glitter and glimmer. Take the journey, and savor it -- and think about the inherent themes and concepts. Highly recommended!