Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson may be my new favourite author.  I was first introduced to her by an internet friend of mine. He and I have been communicating off and on now for almost seven years.  He's an intellectual to whom I turn whenever I am experiencing a philosophical crisis, and he often has an answer to the questions I ask of him.  At any rate, he told me this photograph of mine reminded him of a character from Jeanette Winterson's "The Passion".

This intrigued me, because I had never heard of Winterson before.  I immediately began to scour the shelves of used bookstores for her, and came across several titles, but never The Passion.  I picked up "Written on the Body" and opened it to the first page.  I read the opening sentence:

Why is the measure of love loss?

I was immediately captivated and read the book that night.  It was very much about story-telling and raising the beloved to unreal heights once the lover has absented him/herself from that love.  The gender of the narrator is kept ambiguous throughout, so on top of the string of narratives found in the book, the reader is forced to layer another narrative on top of everything in order to experience the story.

I'm definitely a fan, and I'm looking forward to reading more of her texts.