Why ​Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? 14 csillagozás

Jeanette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

In ​1985 Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published. It tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents. The girl is supposed to grow up and be a missionary. Instead she falls in love with a woman. Disaster.

Written when Jeanette was only twenty-five, her novel went on to win the Whitbread First Novel award, become an international bestseller and inspire an award-winning BBC television adaptation.

Oranges was semi-autobiographical. Mrs Winterson, a thwarted giantess, loomed over that novel and its author's life. When Jeanette finally left her home, at sixteen, because she was in love with a woman, Mrs Winterson asked her: why be happy when you could be normal?

This book is the story of a life's work to find happiness. It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a tyrant in place of a mother, who has two sets of false teeth… (tovább)

Eredeti megjelenés éve: 2011

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Vintage, London, 2012
230 oldal · ISBN: 9780099556091
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Knopf, New York, 2012
230 oldal · ISBN: 9780307401243
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Grove Press, New York, 2012
230 oldal · ISBN: 9780802120106

2 további kiadás


Enciklopédia 1


Kedvencelte 2

Most olvassa 3

Várólistára tette 8

Kívánságlistára tette 6


Kiemelt értékelések

alexlorden P>!
Jeanette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Ezt is újra kellene olvasni valamikor, mert emlékszem, hogy teljesen letaglózott némelyik része, kezdve mondjuk rögtön a címmel. Mert miért is lennél boldog, hogyha lehetnél helyette normális?

Maga az Oranges are Not the Only Fruit annyira nem tetszett, inkább közepes olvasmány volt, de az ebben a könyvben lévő visszaidézések arról, hogy mi volt igaz meg mi nem, kifejezetten fájnak. spoiler

Sajnos a kedvenc idézeteim gyűjteménye elveszett amikor töröltem a Goodreads profilomat, szóval majd újraolvasásnál ezt is pótolni kell.

BarbieB P>!
Jeanette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Időről-időre felbukkan egy könyv a semmiből, és teljesen elvarázsol, magával ragad. Wintersont már elég régóta olvasok, kedvelem is, de ez a regénye most nagyon megtalált. Pedig nem is igazi regény a szó klasszikus értelmében: nincs valódi története, sem lineáris időkezelése vagy legalább eleje-közepe-vége. Inkább egy gondolatfolyamnak tekinthető, amit az írónő életének mozzanatai tagolnak csupán. De micsoda gondolatok ezek! Valódi gyöngyszemek, szeretetről, családról, könyvekről – de nem ám Coelho-s vagy Oravecz Nórás mércével mérve. Értékes, belénk ivódó sorok ezek, amik egytől-egyig idézésért könyörögnek – próbálom is magam visszafogni a posztban.
https://litfan.blog.hu/2018/02/27/jeanette_winterson_wh…

iquexy P>!
Jeanette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Utazás emlékezet-országban; Mrs. Winterson-földön; történet-idővonalak mezsgyéjén. Minden fejezet egy-egy novella, összességében pedig egy sokkal nagyobb valamit adnak ki. Nem csak egy könyvet. Egy életet. Humoros és megrázó és elgondolkodtató és tanulságos. És még ezernyi másféle.

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Knopf, Toronto, 2011
242 oldal · ISBN: 9780307401267 · ASIN: B007D6EW8U

Népszerű idézetek

encsy_eszter>!

I love that way cats like to be half in half out, the wild and the tame, and I too am the wild and the tame. I am domestic, but only if the door is open.

encsy_eszter>!

I needed lessons in love. I still do because nothing could be simpler, nothing could be harder, than love.

encsy_eszter>!

She hated being a nobody, and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents — we don't really have any choice.

metahari P>!

My friends joke that I won't shut the door unless it is officially bedtime or actually snowing into the kitchen. The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is to open the back door. The next thing I do, in winter, is to light the fire.
All those hours spent sitting on my bum on the doorstep have given me a feeling for liminal space. I love that way cats like to be half in half out, the wild and the tame, and I too am the wild and the tame. I am domestic, but only if the door is open.
And I guess that is the key – no one is ever going to lock me in or lock me out again. My door is open and I am the one who opens it.

60. oldal

encsy_eszter>!

Mrs Winterson was unhappy and we had to be unhappy with her. She was waiting for the Apocalypse. Her favourite song was ‘God Has Blotted Them Out’, which was meant to be about sins, but really was about anyone who had ever annoyed her, which was everyone. She just didn't like anyone and she just didn't like life. Life was a burden to be carried as far as the grave and then dumped. Life was a Vale of Tears. Life was a pre—death experience.

apple_pie>!

I was in a night that was lengthening into my life. I walked away and I was trying to walk away from the dark orbit of her depression. I was trying to walk out of the shadow she cast. I wasn't really going anywhere. I was going to be away, free, or so it seemed, but you always take it with you. It takes much longer to leave the psychic place than the physical place.

Chapter 9 - English Literature A-Z

apple_pie>!

The more I read, the more I felt connected across time to other lives and deeper sympathies. I felt less isolated. I wasn't floating on my little raft in the present; there were bridges that led over to solid ground. Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.
     Literature is common ground. It is ground not managed wholly by commercial interests, nor can it be strip-mined like popular culture – exploit the new thing then move on.
     There's a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.
     Reading is where the wild things are.

Chapter 11 - Art and Lies

encsy_eszter>!

I like it that pre-industrial societies, and religious cultures still, now, distinguish between two kinds of time – linear time, that is also cyclical because history repeats itself, even as it seems to progress, and real time, which is not subject to the clock or the calendar, and is where the soul used to live. This real time is reversible and redeemable. It is why, in religious rites of all kinds, something that happened once is re-enacted – Passover, Christmas, Easter, or, in the pagan record, Midsummer and the dying of the god. As we participate in the ritual, we step outside of linear time and enter real time.
Time is only truly locked when we live in a mechanised world. Then we turn into clock-watchers and time-servers. Like the rest of life, time becomes uniform and standardised.

metahari P>!

Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.
There is warmth there too – a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm. I know that from the chilly nights on the doorstep.

61. oldal

Shee>!

A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is.


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