winterson oranges are not the only fruit

I didn’t think the book was particularly dark and disturbing for the most part (though there was a persistent feeling of sadness over the second half or so) but I was seriously creeped out by the scene where Jeanette and one of the women from church sleep together.

I didn’t find any of the characters besides Jeanette particularly interesting (with the possible exception of Elsie,) and I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out which of Jeanette’s mother’s friends was which. The idea of a budding lesbian who spends most of her youth as an incredibly outspoken little fundamentalist seemed much more interesting. I also really liked how the heroine wasn’t written as a rebel who separated herself from the ideologies of the church at an early age. I appreciated that people’s belief in God was portrayed as an idea that could be used or misused. The portrayal of Christianity, while sometimes over-the-top, has a lot more open-minded vibe than a lot of stories that focus on religious bigotry. I liked the way Jeanette was very religious for the majority of the story and was still open to the possibility of God at the end, even after she had been relentlessly gay-bashed and thrown out by her mom’s church. I thought most of the times the novel abandoned the main narrative and went on an extended flight of fancy, it didn’t seem to have much to do with anything and was surprisingly dull and confusing. I found Jeanette’s character interesting and I wished the book had focused primarily on her and left out the rambling anecdote-thingies that appeared throughout. Jeanette is on her way to becoming a thoroughly committed Bible-basher like her mom but as a teenager she begins to realize that she’s a lesbian, and is faced with fury and ostracization by both her mother and her church.

As a young child, Jeanette is fully committed to being a missionary when she grows up and she alienates her more secular classmates with her intense and decidedly old-school approach to her faith.

The novel’s protagonist (also named Jeanette) lives in a relatively small British community with her pious, sex-repulsed adoptive mother and her adoptive father, who barely makes an appearance and is infrequently even mentioned even though he appears to live in the same house with Jeanette and her mother. It’s the first novel I’ve read by Jeanette Winterson, some of her books look extremely strange and I decided to start out with something she had written that was a little more straightforward. I didn’t know much about it going in except that it was a gay coming-of-age story, and it didn’t turn out quite like I expected. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is the semi-autobiographical account of the author’s highly religious upbringing and her growing awareness of her sexuality.

Winterson oranges are not the only fruit