This edition published September 2014 by Vintage. First published March 1985.
Read May 2020.
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up to be a servant of God, by a mother intent on her child becoming a missionary to poor heathens.
Jeanette loves her little church family, with its religious fervour and passion to save - they are her world and she is sure that her destiny it to spread the holy word, as her mother has always assured her.
But when Jeanette falls in love with another member of her spiritual family - and that person is a girl - she cannot understand how their love can be wrong, even if it is labelled as an unnatural passion by her church.
Can Jeanette's feelings really be unnatural? Does her destiny lie in another direction than as one of God's holy prophets? In the end she must question all that she has been taught to believe, leave everything she thought she knew behind, and make a new life for herself.
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Oranges are Not The Only Fruit is a book that I have been meaning to read for years and since I managed to get a bargain copy of Jeanette Winterson's autobiography, What Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? recently, I thought the time was ripe for to read the semi-autobiographical (and earlier) book first.
Well, I was in for some surprises here, and am mightily sorry that I have taken so long to read Oranges. What amazing book!
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Orange Are Not The Only Fruit is the tale of Jeanette, an adopted girl brought up in an evangelical household and intended for life as a missionary. However, even though Jeanette loves her church and family, she finds that she is unable to follow her destined path, because she is a lesbian - someone who indulges in unnatural passions in the eyes of her church.
Jeanette longs to belong and never having fit in at school (mostly due to her religious beliefs) means that she relies heavily on her church family to validate her existence, and it's quite telling that chapters are headed with biblical titles that fit perfectly with each stage of Jeanette's story. She adores being part of the crusade to save, is devoted to God, but comes to see that who she is can never be compatible with the beliefs of her family. To her, the love she experiences with another woman is pure and true and cannot be unnatural.
Ultimately, Jeanette must make a decision - should she deny herself happiness and remain in the bosom of her church family, to keep her mother happy, or should she cut the ties of family that bind her and be fee to live as she wants? This is a hard choice for a working class girl with no money and nowhere to go, but she has been brought up to be strong and her strength of character is what carries her through.
Many parts of this book are quite difficult to read. Jeanette's church almost entirely runs on the strength of some formidable women, who are certainly not afraid to take the fight of the Lord right to the doors of the heathen masses. You want so much to admire these women, but their utter conviction that they are right leads them into some very questionable acts that end in downright cruelty and smack of deep hypocrisy - and this leaves a very nasty taste in your mouth.
But there is so much humour in these pages too - and this is what surprised me most about this book. Think Victoria Wood's style of Lancashire humour and you will understand why I found myself chuckling so much at the absurd statements and pithy asides Jeanette Winterson has coming out of the mouths of her characters.
I also loved the whimsical way Winterson has with her writing. Some of this tale is told in the allegorical form of fairy tales that break up the main story. At first this seems a little strange, as it does not appear to relate to Jeanette's plight, but each tale has something important to say about her search for identity and freedom. I found the last tale particularly moving, as it addresses family ties and the ability of those we love to attach an invisible thread to us and draw us back, even when we thought we had escaped from our former lives.
This is one of those books that simply needs to be read. Even if you just confine yourself to Jeanette Winterson's introduction to the book you will be doing yourself a huge favour. Her idea that you should "Read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact." as a way to explore who you are is a really compelling one, and her love of fiction shines out through her words - and I cannot but wholeheartedly support the idea that reading what you don't know is always sound advice.
"Oranges is autobiographical in so much as I used my own life as the base for a story.
There's nothing unusual about that. The trick is to turn your own life into something
that has meaning for people whose experience is nothing like your own.
Write what you know is reasonable advice.
Read what you don't know is better advice.
"Reading is an adventure. Adventures are about the unknown.
When I started to read seriously I was excited and comforted
all at the same time. Literature is a mix of unfamiliarity and recognition.
The situation can take us anywhere - across time and space, the globe,
through the lives of people who can never be like us -
into the heart of anguish we have never felt - crimes we could not commit."
Yet as we travel deeper into the story, the feeling we get is of being understood -
which is odd when you think about it, because at school learning is based on
whether or not we understand what we are reading.
In fact it is the story (or the poem) that is understanding us.
Books read us back to ourselves."
I could easily go on and on with Jeanette Winterson's words here, but I won't - get yourself a copy of this incredible book and read them for yourself. You won't be sorry.
By the way, the audio book of this modern classic is read by Jeanette Winterson herself and it is glorious, so if audio books are your thing then I highly recommend you check this one out.
From the cover of the book:
'Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what'
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.
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