One Aladdin Two Lamps
About the book
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Grover Press
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)
My review
I love Jeanette Winterson. She's an incredible writer and a genius thinker. I once got to see her at a live reading for Frankissstein and knew I would read anything she wrote ever after. So, of course, when I heard that she had a collection of essays that blends memoir with cultural criticism by way of One Thousand and One Nights, I was all in.
There were a lot of things that I liked about this book. It's at its strongest when it is drawing parallels between her points and the Nights. I also found a lot of the insights that she drew about her own life to be poignant and moving. I'm feeling inspired to seek out more of her narrative nonfiction backlist. I also love how unapologetically feminist and inclusive she is, and applaud her for daring to write a book that is so sharply rooted in not only "the present moment" but literally January of 2026. Even one year from now, certain topics she discusses will have aged.
Where this book is less strong is in the call to arms she's trying to make around social justice, climate change, and feminism. A lot of her points feel obvious and tired to someone who is well-versed in these issues and on the same side as her. And I don't think she's going to convince anyone of anything, because people who are not on the same side as her are very unlikely to read this book. She's preaching to the choir and not really saying anything that the choir doesn't already know.
I also know that a lot of readers have a gut reaction to her viewpoint on AI because it is not 100% negative. I don't think that should stop you from reading this book, because I think her points are more nuanced than they might sound before you've read it. And I appreciated that they’re coming from a place of the challenges she faced with her gender and sexual identity when she was young.
Anyway, I would recommend listening to this one on audio if it interests you! Winterson reads it herself, and it's a quick read that's pretty straightforward to follow.
Content and trigger warnings
Current events (racism, misogyny, etc)
Murder, death
