Title: Written On The Body
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Length: 190 pages
Year Written: 1992
Why I chose this book: I was assigned this book in a Women's Studies class I took in college. Even though there are notes in the book (in my handwriting), I couldn't remember actually reading any of it.
This was an unexpectedly difficult read, especially coming off the heels of a few more traditional novels with straightforward story lines. Written On The Body, the story of a person and their affair with a married woman, often seems more like poetry than prose. And I use the word "person" because the narrator in this story is genderless. Rather, they do have a gender, but it is never mentioned. This was the only thing I knew about the book when I started to read, and so I caught myself searching for clues as to whether this was a man or a woman. And there really is no way to tell, but that's kind of the point. Jeanette Winterson is telling a story of love and passion beyond gender. Written On The Body is a story about the way love can consume you, get you into ridiculous situations, and run your life so far off course that you don't know what's what.
This book was so fucking quotable, too. It's a Tumblr dream. Winterson has such an ethereal way with words, that even when you aren't quite sure what she means, you feel it anyway. Here are a few of the quotes I marked:
"The day before Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you?"
"Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them."
"When she bleeds the smells I know change color. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun."
Rating: 8.5/10
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