Written on the Body
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Johnathan Cape / Vintage International
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Note: 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 full review.
Cover Description
Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation 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 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.
TL;DR Review
Written on the Body is a scorching, poetic, desperate novel about desire. It’s told through the eyes of a gender-ambiguous narrator having an affair with a married woman.
For you if: You like poetic prose, and you can stop yourself from blushing when you read about sex in public.
Full Review
I met Jeanette Winterson in person at her launch event for Booker-prize-nominated Frankissstein at the Strand. It was, by far, the best and most unique book event I have ever attended. So when Shannon Pufahl (author of On Swift Horses) named Winterson’s Written on the Body as an example of queer literature that affected her most, I knew I had to read it.
This book is short, coming in just under 200 pages. It’s written in the first person of a narrator whose gender is never revealed — in fact, it’s written in a way that this person could be any gender, with hints in many different directions. (They also talk about former girlfriends and boyfriends.) What is clear, though, is that the narrator is desperately in love and lust with a woman named Louise, who is unhappily married.
The narrator takes us through the story of their affair, starting before it began and hinting at a desperate, heart-wrenching ending (?). It’s explicit and scorching, but different from what I had expected. Rather than narrating their time in bed together, the main character is more apt to describe the details of Louise’s body with desperate, sweeping language. It’s a lot of emotion and waxing poetic.
There is a section toward the end when the narrator is particularly devastated that just yanked out my gut. They are reading about anatomy, and as they move through different parts (skin, skeleton, nerve endings, senses, etc), they launch into pseudo-letters to Louise that are over the top and delicious and gorgeously written.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that this was different from what I’d expected going in but not a disappointment. I don’t think Jeanette Winterson could ever be a disappointment. This is must-read classic queer literature (is that a thing?). Read it.
Trigger Warnings
Miscarriage
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