I know many people regard Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit as one of their all-time favourites, but I found it completely underwhelming. It had the feel of the inter-war period, but given the story is based on Winterson’s own life, it must have been the 1970s. And nor could I determine the era in which the novel is set. I couldn’t figure out the age of Jeanette, the main character and narrator, because she seems to jump in age without any sense of time having moved on. I’m not ashamed to admit that getting a handle on the storyline stumped me. It’s a little too clever and a little too knowing in places, almost as if the author is showing off, and I found the leaps from one style to another slightly clunky and confusing. I found the writing style strangely confident but very idiosyncratic, wavering as it does into fables and fairytales, but then returning to a more matter-of-fact refreshingly simple narrative.

This unique coming-of-age book - Winterson claims it is semi-autobiographical - won the 1985 Whitbread Award for a First Novel. She supports herself by selling ice-cream and working at a funeral parlour, all the while remaining true to herself. Forced to endure exorcisms, she is eventually kicked out of home. However, as a teenager she succumbs to “unnatural passions” and falls in love with another girl, scandalising the local community. From an early age Jeanette is indoctrinated into the religious life and plans to become a missionary when she leaves school. Poor young girl, Jeanette, is adopted by a Pentecostal couple - a quiet, largely absent father and a church-obsessed domineering mother - in Lancashire. The main thread goes something like this. Religion, obsession, poverty and adoption are other subjects that are central to the storyline.

Of course female homosexuality is one of the themes that runs through Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit but it is far from the only theme. Funny how your mind catalogues unread books by such crude generalisations, isn’t it? Not having seen the BBC TV series of the same name, I knew surprisingly little about the storyline except that it had “something to do with lesbians”. Well, that one day came around for me last week although I’d had the book in my reading queue for a year or more. Fiction – paperback Vintage 171 pages 2001.įirst published in 1985 by a precocious new writing talent - Jeanette Winterson was just 24 at the time - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is one of those books that you know you’ll get around to reading one day.

Oranges are not the only