The Passion
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Price: $11.20
You Save: $2.80 (20%)
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson won the Whitbread Award for best first fiction for the semi-autobiographical Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, an often wry exploration of lesbian possibility bumping up against evangelical fanaticism. She was 25. Two years later, The Passion, her third novel, appeared, the fantastical tale of Henri--Napoleon's cook--and Villanelle, a Venetian gondolier's daughter who has webbed feet (previously an all-male attribute), works as a croupier, picks pockets, cross-dresses, and literally loses her heart to a beautiful woman. Written in a lyrical and jolting combination of fairy tale diction and rhythm and the staccato, the book would be a risky proposition in lesser hands. Winterson has said that she wanted to look at people's need to worship and examine what happens to young men in militaristic societies. The question was, how to do so without being polemical and didactic? Only she could have come up with such an exquisite answer. In the end, Henri, incarcerated on an island of madmen, becomes aware that his passion, "even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else."
I can't recall a time I've had such mixed feelings about a book. The Henri parts are uniformly great (except the parts in the last 20 pages or so). The Villanelle parts are great too, when there's storytelling happening. I felt that the book was basically hijacked by the "real" Jeanette Winterson when one of these dewy and basically really trite and overblown rants about passion or love would spring up. I think Winterson is best when she's describing events--when she goes off into abstract musings about love, she doesn't write much differently than any weepy, sappy, romantic writing program graduate half drunk on good French wine. It's somewhat the way I feel when reading Tolstoy--give me a scene, I'm happy; give me your infantile philosophy, I want to set the book on fire.
I've Read Better Cereal Boxes
Call me old fashioned. If you write a book that uses a real historical backdrop -- here, Napoleon's Europe -- you should keep it real. The first section (of four) deals with Henri, a new French recruit. Winterson uses spare language to paint a convincing and fast-paced picture of military life at the beginning of the 19th century fairly well, except for a slightly clumsy "foreshadowing event." The second section, set in Venice, told thru the eyes of streetwise Villanelle, hints at supernatural events but -- who knows? -- maybe it's all in her mind, like the slimy, algae-covered soothsayer with a crown of rats she paddles by from time to time. It could happen...I suppose.
But the 3rd and 4th sections get a little "out to lunch." It's nearly 8 years later. Henri meets up with Villanelle (now an officers' whore) near Moscow during Bonaparte's Russian debacle. They desert. Henri (not so) slowly falls in love with Villanelle. But, alas, Villanelle lost her heart (literally lost her heart) to a married Venetian woman years before.
A short book. Well written in sections but a failure on its plot devices. And the end is hideously overwritten. We get it, Ms. Winterson, there's no need for a sledge hammer.
Just Short of Marvelous
The prose is quite lovely, she obviously has a gift with the language that I envy. The story itself is not really the point. It only exists to drive the characters from one jewel of insight to the next. Normally I hate "concept books" like that, but either I am getting older and wiser, or this book is that good. One thing that helps is she does not fall into the trap that many authors do when writing concept focused novels in making her characters utterly unlikable. It really doesn't matter how illuminating your prose is if it is coming from the mouths of characters the reader cannot relate to. The characters are likable, even if the main characters who trade narration speak with the same "voice". The voice is so lovely, you forgive them for that just as you forgive the author the lift from T.S. Elliot.
It kinda falls short of true, "Wow!" though. I think that part of that is the fact that like many writers, she has fallen into the trap of over processing emotion in order to make it beautiful. In doing so she looses emotion's raw edge. She becomes detached from it. When the characters talk about love and passion and pain you understand it, but you don't feel it. It's beautiful, but not evocative.
Something else I realized that bothered me about this book. The author keeps referring to how happy country people are because they are "simple" with simple lives. Being raised in a township of less than a thousand people, I can honestly say that that is not the case. Just because one does not work in an office and change jobs every three years that does not mean their lives are more "simple". I can tell you that all the facets of human relationships are just as prevelant in the rural areas as they are in town. The only difference is the older generations don't talk about it the way city folk do. I can also point to the fact that while many of the older generation (born at the beginning of the 20th century) may not have had beyond a 9th grade education, most of them continued to read and educate themselves their entire lives. Some of them are more well read than people that claim to be among the literati. The only difference is they have not a professor telling them how to interpret what they read, so often you end up having some very interesting discussions with them.
So maybe the author should not be trying to speak for country people and the beauty of their "simple lives" because I think I can guarantee as far back as the 19th century, they probably were not that simple. It actually kind of smacks of the "noble savage" condescension.
But still, worth a read even if that isn't your sort of thing. This was really not my sort of thing, but I am glad I read it.
Beautiful prose, tragic yet lovely story
I will be reading Winterson's other novels after reading The Passion. It's an excellent novel, written in a beautiful, sometimes languid, sometimes magical style that makes the reader re-read sentences for the pleasure of the poetry of her words. I was a bit disappointed with the ending of the novel but only because the beginning is so stunning.
A highwayscribery "Book Report"
Three readings of this slim tome in the past ten years do not yield a conclusion that each time it gets better, but it certainly holds up well.
This story of a peasant boy who cooks chickens for Napolean and the cross-dressing card dealer in a Venice, Italy casino is blessed with sparing touches of magical realism, informative research about the time and place(s) that are woven into the author's poetic prose, and a brand of contemplation about life's meanings and mysteries that cannot be taught.
"This morning I smell the oats and I see a little boy watching his reflection in a copper pot he's polished. His father comes in and laughs and offers him his shaving mirror instead. But in the pot he can see all the distortions of his face. He sees many possible faces and so he sees what he might become."
Of Venice, the card dealer Villanelle observes, "This is the city of uncertainty, where routes and faces look alike and are not. Death will be like that. We will forever be recognizing people we have never met.
But darkness and death are not the same.
The one is temporary, the other is not."
The story is rich in such passages and even when they may not ring true, the music seems always pleasing.
"The heart is so easily mocked, believing that the sun can rise twice or that roses bloom because we want them to."
I often recommend "The Passion" to nonfiction readers who say they can't stick with literature, because it is of the highest kind, but taxes only as much as you let it.
Villanelle's dealer's perspective may say it all. "You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play."
List Price:
Price: $11.20
You Save: $2.80 (20%)
Product Details
- Notes: Brand name New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Up: NEW
- ISBN13: 9780802135223
Description
Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin, and Villanelle, the red-haired daughter of a Venetian boatman, who has lost her heart to a married noblewoman and wanders the western world to retrieve it.
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson won the Whitbread Award for best first fiction for the semi-autobiographical Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, an often wry exploration of lesbian possibility bumping up against evangelical fanaticism. She was 25. Two years later, The Passion, her third novel, appeared, the fantastical tale of Henri--Napoleon's cook--and Villanelle, a Venetian gondolier's daughter who has webbed feet (previously an all-male attribute), works as a croupier, picks pockets, cross-dresses, and literally loses her heart to a beautiful woman. Written in a lyrical and jolting combination of fairy tale diction and rhythm and the staccato, the book would be a risky proposition in lesser hands. Winterson has said that she wanted to look at people's need to worship and examine what happens to young men in militaristic societies. The question was, how to do so without being polemical and didactic? Only she could have come up with such an exquisite answer. In the end, Henri, incarcerated on an island of madmen, becomes aware that his passion, "even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else."
Customer Reviews
Mixed FeelingsI can't recall a time I've had such mixed feelings about a book. The Henri parts are uniformly great (except the parts in the last 20 pages or so). The Villanelle parts are great too, when there's storytelling happening. I felt that the book was basically hijacked by the "real" Jeanette Winterson when one of these dewy and basically really trite and overblown rants about passion or love would spring up. I think Winterson is best when she's describing events--when she goes off into abstract musings about love, she doesn't write much differently than any weepy, sappy, romantic writing program graduate half drunk on good French wine. It's somewhat the way I feel when reading Tolstoy--give me a scene, I'm happy; give me your infantile philosophy, I want to set the book on fire.
I've Read Better Cereal Boxes
Call me old fashioned. If you write a book that uses a real historical backdrop -- here, Napoleon's Europe -- you should keep it real. The first section (of four) deals with Henri, a new French recruit. Winterson uses spare language to paint a convincing and fast-paced picture of military life at the beginning of the 19th century fairly well, except for a slightly clumsy "foreshadowing event." The second section, set in Venice, told thru the eyes of streetwise Villanelle, hints at supernatural events but -- who knows? -- maybe it's all in her mind, like the slimy, algae-covered soothsayer with a crown of rats she paddles by from time to time. It could happen...I suppose.
But the 3rd and 4th sections get a little "out to lunch." It's nearly 8 years later. Henri meets up with Villanelle (now an officers' whore) near Moscow during Bonaparte's Russian debacle. They desert. Henri (not so) slowly falls in love with Villanelle. But, alas, Villanelle lost her heart (literally lost her heart) to a married Venetian woman years before.
A short book. Well written in sections but a failure on its plot devices. And the end is hideously overwritten. We get it, Ms. Winterson, there's no need for a sledge hammer.
Just Short of Marvelous
The prose is quite lovely, she obviously has a gift with the language that I envy. The story itself is not really the point. It only exists to drive the characters from one jewel of insight to the next. Normally I hate "concept books" like that, but either I am getting older and wiser, or this book is that good. One thing that helps is she does not fall into the trap that many authors do when writing concept focused novels in making her characters utterly unlikable. It really doesn't matter how illuminating your prose is if it is coming from the mouths of characters the reader cannot relate to. The characters are likable, even if the main characters who trade narration speak with the same "voice". The voice is so lovely, you forgive them for that just as you forgive the author the lift from T.S. Elliot.
It kinda falls short of true, "Wow!" though. I think that part of that is the fact that like many writers, she has fallen into the trap of over processing emotion in order to make it beautiful. In doing so she looses emotion's raw edge. She becomes detached from it. When the characters talk about love and passion and pain you understand it, but you don't feel it. It's beautiful, but not evocative.
Something else I realized that bothered me about this book. The author keeps referring to how happy country people are because they are "simple" with simple lives. Being raised in a township of less than a thousand people, I can honestly say that that is not the case. Just because one does not work in an office and change jobs every three years that does not mean their lives are more "simple". I can tell you that all the facets of human relationships are just as prevelant in the rural areas as they are in town. The only difference is the older generations don't talk about it the way city folk do. I can also point to the fact that while many of the older generation (born at the beginning of the 20th century) may not have had beyond a 9th grade education, most of them continued to read and educate themselves their entire lives. Some of them are more well read than people that claim to be among the literati. The only difference is they have not a professor telling them how to interpret what they read, so often you end up having some very interesting discussions with them.
So maybe the author should not be trying to speak for country people and the beauty of their "simple lives" because I think I can guarantee as far back as the 19th century, they probably were not that simple. It actually kind of smacks of the "noble savage" condescension.
But still, worth a read even if that isn't your sort of thing. This was really not my sort of thing, but I am glad I read it.
Beautiful prose, tragic yet lovely story
I will be reading Winterson's other novels after reading The Passion. It's an excellent novel, written in a beautiful, sometimes languid, sometimes magical style that makes the reader re-read sentences for the pleasure of the poetry of her words. I was a bit disappointed with the ending of the novel but only because the beginning is so stunning.
A highwayscribery "Book Report"
Three readings of this slim tome in the past ten years do not yield a conclusion that each time it gets better, but it certainly holds up well.
This story of a peasant boy who cooks chickens for Napolean and the cross-dressing card dealer in a Venice, Italy casino is blessed with sparing touches of magical realism, informative research about the time and place(s) that are woven into the author's poetic prose, and a brand of contemplation about life's meanings and mysteries that cannot be taught.
"This morning I smell the oats and I see a little boy watching his reflection in a copper pot he's polished. His father comes in and laughs and offers him his shaving mirror instead. But in the pot he can see all the distortions of his face. He sees many possible faces and so he sees what he might become."
Of Venice, the card dealer Villanelle observes, "This is the city of uncertainty, where routes and faces look alike and are not. Death will be like that. We will forever be recognizing people we have never met.
But darkness and death are not the same.
The one is temporary, the other is not."
The story is rich in such passages and even when they may not ring true, the music seems always pleasing.
"The heart is so easily mocked, believing that the sun can rise twice or that roses bloom because we want them to."
I often recommend "The Passion" to nonfiction readers who say they can't stick with literature, because it is of the highest kind, but taxes only as much as you let it.
Villanelle's dealer's perspective may say it all. "You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play."
Daily MailMIDSUMMER NIGHTS EDITED BY JEANETTE WINTERSON (Quercus £18.99)Published to celebrate 75 years of the Glyndebourne Festival of Opera and boasting a seriously impressive line-up of authors, the stories in this collection are all inspired by the plots of operas. A great idea, in theory, although I've never read so