Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson (Jenny)

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson
Relation to Orange Prize: longlisted in 1997
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

While I love her writing as always, this is not my favorite Jeanette Winterson. That honor still belongs to Written on the Body or The Powerbook. It is funny because both of those books have less plot than Gut Symmetries, but I think it is some of the plot in this book that made me enjoy it less.

The story focuses on three people - Alice, a theoretical physicist, who has an affair with Jove, and then also his wife Stella. Each chapter is told from a different perspective, with the title of a tarot card, and some chapters even focus on telling the stories of the parents of the three. I think that and the unfatal cannibalism created an environment where there was too much going on to really capture the intensity of the relationship.

Still, the language is gorgeous. The quotations I've typed up are just more to demonstrate that side of it.

"I know I am a fool, trying to make connections out of scraps but how else is there to proceed? The fragmentariness of life makes coherence suspect but to babble is a different kind of treachery. Perhaps it is a vanity. Am I vain enough to assume you will understand me? No. So I go on puzzling over new joints for words...."

"I know I am a fool, hoping dirt and glory are both a kind of luminous paint; the humiliations and exaltations that light us up... I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other. The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love."

Ah, her language! This one made me laugh, because it passes by before you realize what has been said:
"Inevitably it is not only the gastric juices that are stimulated by luxury and fresh air. What could be nicer than preprandial fellatio in a foreign tongue?"

"When we killed what we were to become what we are, what did we do with the bodies? We did what most people do; buried them under the floorboards and got used to the smell. I've lived my life as a serial killer; finish with one part, strangle it and move on to the next. Life in neat little boxes is life in neat little coffins, the dead bodies of the past laid out side by side. I am discovering, now, in the late afternoon of the day, that the dead still speak."

"I do not want to declare love on you... I would love you as a bird loves flight, as meat loves salt, as a dog loves chase, as water finds its own level. Or I would not love you at all."

"The surprise of wings was this love. We did escape gravity. If I flew too close to the sun, forgive me."

"Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough."

I have another unread Winterson at home that I hope to read this year, and I am eagerly anticipating her autobiography, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? that is supposed to come out in March.  She is one of my top three favorite authors of all time, and I'd recommend her to anyone!

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (Jill)

Alias Grace
By Margaret Atwood
Completed July 13, 2008

Once again, I am at a loss for words after reading another brilliant fictional work by Margaret Atwood. This time, I was mesmerized by Alias Grace – a complex novel based on the historical figure, Grace Marks, who was convicted of killing her employer and his mistress in 1840’s Canada.

The story of Grace Marks is one of contradiction. While Atwood relied on historical accounts when she could, the many gaps in Grace’s story and her collaborator, James McDermott, was good fodder for a fictional tale. Grace offered many renditions to the story, ultimately maintaining that she experienced amnesia about the murders. McDermott, who hung for the murders, always argued that it was Grace who masterminded the murders. Grace was found guilty, but the judges felt that she was too young, uneducated and naïve to be executed for the crime. Instead, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.

This is how we met Grace in this story – as a laborer in the governor’s house during the day and penitentiary inmate at night. A small group, believing in Grace’s innocence, asked psychiatrist Dr. Simon Jordan to interview Grace, to reach deep beneath her amnesia so the truth could be told about her involvement in the murders. Through these conversations, we learned about Grace’s childhood, career as a servant and eventually the murders.

The story, while predominantly Grace’s, often showed the slow demise of Dr. Jordan, whose life became eerily similar to Grace’s murdered employer. Dr. Jordan was torn between solving Grace’s mysteries and keeping his emotions out of the investigation. Sprinkled in were letters from his mother, which provided great comic relief for me, as she was so passive-aggressive. I probably would want to explore mental asylums in other countries, too, if I had a mother like Mrs. Jordan.

I could never shake the feeling that Grace was smarter than she wanted people to believe. Her calm, collected manner during her arrest, trial and incarceration were interpreted as “guilt,” but I saw it as a woman who was always thinking and calculating her next move. She was a fascinating character study.

I will mention that I was slightly dissatisfied with the ending. Throughout the last half of the novel, I thought the book was heading in a certain direction – but it didn’t. I don’t want to say more in case you haven’t read this book. Despite this, I would highly recommend Alias Grace to Atwood lovers, readers of women’s history and anyone who enjoys a true ‘who done it” story. ( )

Fall On Your Knees - Wendy's Review

You might cross this road and walk a few steps to the edge of the cliff. Down below is the jagged water. All day it chatters back and forth across the gravel beach, unless the weather's rough. Farther out it's mauve like a pair of cold lips; closer in it's copper green, gun gray, seducing seaweed to dance the seven veils despite the chill, chained to their rocks by the hair. And there on the cliff you might sit with your legs dangling even on a flinty winter day, and feel soothed by the salt wind. - From Fall On Your Knees, page 27-

Ann-Marie MacDonalds multigenerational family saga Fall On Your Knees captures the reader from the start with a finely tuned sense of place and characters who fill the page. The story begins with James Piper, a native of Cape Breton Island, and Materia, his tragic Lebanese child-bride. One by one, children are born to the Pipers - each with distinct and compelling personalities. MacDonald takes her time, gradually revealing the dark shadows beneath the surface of this family.

Some of my favorite parts of the novel consisted of the careful construction of character and the beautiful and horrible imagery.

A war changes people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness and tightly wrapped puttees. Then, providing you don't take flight from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone, who, through a bizarre coincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. -From Fall On Your Knees, page 112-

This book is full of tragedy, and yet MacDonald tempers it with a sardonic humor and accessible prose that compels the reader to keep turning the pages. My favorite character is Frances - the imaginative second child of the Pipers who has a biting wit and a gift for words.

You might think Frances would be a slob, but she isn't, she's very neat and organized. She has accommodated Lily with a framed magazine photograph of Mary Pickford in a stupid gingham apron. It hangs next to Lily's color print of Jesus with the lambs. Jesus looks sad, of course, "because he's thinking about how much he likes lamb chops," says Frances, but Lily is not fooled by that . The rest of the walls are covered in Frances' collection. She writes away for publicity photos. There is one of Lillian Gish trapped on an ice floe. There is Houdini naked and furious in a milk can. There is an actual poster that an usher at the Empire gave her of Theda Bara in Sin, holding her unbelievably long tresses at arm's length above her head like a madwoman. Frances calls her Head of Haira. Mercedes thinks the picture is immoral. -From Fall On Your Knees, page 192-

Fall On Your Knees is a magnificent, sprawling novel of family secrets, religious obsession, and survival. It resonates with unforgettable characters.

Recommended; rated 4/5.