i'm glad to see that this holds up, even as the genderless narrator isn't radical in the way that it originally was when this was published, and for years afterward. still, the not knowing means that the reader is constantly making assumptions and bringing their own stuff into it. of course that's always true when we're reading, but it's just insistently in your face when reading this.

i didn't love this as much this time around, but i still really, really liked it. her references (she's so smart) her writing her meditations her ability to focus on the thing that most people don't. there is such exquisite beauty in this. so much to think about.

"I took them into the garden and burned them one by one and I thought how easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it."

"Louise, in this single bed, between these garish sheets, I will find a map as likely as any treasure hunt. I will explore you and mine you and you will redraw me according to your will. We shall cross one another's boundaries and make ourselves one nation. Scoop me in your hands for I am good soil. Eat of me and let me be sweet."

"I wasn't happy but the power of memory is such that it can lift reality for a time. Or is memory the more real place?"

on the clavicle: 'I cannot think of the double curve lithe and flowing with movement as a bony ridge, I think of it as the musical instrument that bears the same root. Clavis. Key. Clavichord. The first stringed instrument with a keyboard. Your clavicle is both keyboard and key. If I push my fingers into the recesses behind the bone I find you like a soft shell crab. I find the openings between the springs of muscle where I can press myself into the chords of your neck. The bone runs in perfect scale from sternum to scapula. It feels lathe-turned. Why should a bone be balletic?"

"Wisdom says forget, the body howls." (4 stars)

from nov 2013:
this book is simply and utterly gorgeous from the first word to virtually the last. it's a beautiful poem (but isn't poetry) that i read as slowly as i could to savor it. the parts that aren't lyrical are beautiful in their own and very different way, as she's talking about sickness and death, about the body decaying or functioning. this book, although even better in my memory of it (i remember swooning over it the first time) than in actuality, is truly wonderful.

but - it's not for everyone, as it's not a plot-heavy novel (although the plot isn't tenuous at all). it's simply the narrator's experience of love and loss, focusing on the most recent of the many loves in his/her life. (the gender of the narrator isn't clear, making this i guess theoretically more accessible to readers in general? although i found it distracting - because i was trying to label the narrator, not because she wrote it in a way that made it distracting. actually i thought she did a really incredible job making it totally plausible that the narrator could be either a man or a woman; it was written very naturally, she didn't seem to be trying to exclude language or detail.) the overwhelming love the narrator feels is so perfectly described. truly, just gorgeous all around.

this is a love letter to love (and sex) but also to language and words.

"I don't like to think of myself as an insincere person but if I say I love you and I don't mean it then what else am I? Will I cherish you, adore you, make way for you, make myself better for you, look at you and always see you, tell you the truth? And if love is not those things then what things?"

"Louise, in this single bed, between these garish sheets, I will find a map as likely as any treasure hunt. I will explore you and mine you and you will redraw me according to your will. We shall cross one another's boundaries and make ourselves one nation. Scoop me in your hands for I am good soil. Eat of me and let me be sweet."

"Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book."

"I've hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?"

"My lover is an olive tree whose roots grow by the sea. Her fruit is pungent and green. It is my joy to get at the stone of her. The little stone of her hard by the tongue. Her thick-fleshed salt-veined swaddle stone.

Who eats an olive without first puncturing the swaddle? The waited moment when the teeth shoot a strong burst of clear juice that has in it the weight of the land, the vicissitudes of the weather, even the first name of the olive keeper.

The sun is in your mouth. The burst of an olive is breaking of a bright sky. The hot days when the rains come. Eat the day where the sand burned the soles of your feet before the thunderstorm brought up your skin in bubbles of rain.

Our private grove is heavy with fruit. I shall worm you to the stone, the rough swaddle stone."

and the last paragraph of the book, which has spoilers, sort of:
"This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it's getting late. I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields."

fucking gorgeous. (5 stars) ( )

Your face gores me.

“During the night I had a lurid dream about an ex-girlfriend of mine who had been heavily into papier-maché. ... I went to her house one day and poking out of the letter-box just at crotch level was the head of a yellow and green serpent. Not a real one ... What kind of girl aims a snake at your genitals? ... ‘It's for the postman. He’s been bothering me.’ ... ‘You've nothing to be frightened of,’ she said. ‘It's got a rat trap in the jaw.’”

Either the narrator left it unremarked that an ex implied they have a micropenis, or else it’s rather blatantly obvious it’s admitted the narrator is female.

watch here: https://www.youtube.com/@starkissedstories

Very pretty writing. A lot of pages for just one person to think about their partner - dragged on a bit.
Am also not here for anyone making medical choices for another person who is more than able to make their own choices. ( )

The unnamed narrator is a philanderer, conducting relationships with both men and women. We follow the narrator’s many exploits on a quest for love and self-knowledge. The narrator eventually falls in love with Louise, a married woman. The gender of the narrator is not revealed. The reader may choose, based on the reader’s own background, preferences, and experiences.

Winterson is a skilled writer. I was surprised at how much we got to know the narrator through actions and language. While the narrator initially seems aloof, personality traits emerge – selfishness, temper, inability to commit. But by the end, the narrator is changed profoundly. It is an examination of identity, love, and grief.

On love: “Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.”

On grief: “Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rattle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love cannot return them even for a day? I raise my head to the door and think I will see you in the frame. I know it is your voice in the corridor but when I run outside the corridor is empty. There is nothing I can do that will make any difference. The last word was yours.”

It is a sensual novel, written poetically. There is a section in the middle that reads as an ode to the beloved’s body. It portrays the universality of love, loss, pain, grief, happiness, and joy. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
( )