Jeanette Winterson
is known as an experimental writer, and while this novel is not as
unconventional as her later ones, the reflections and metaphorical
fables interspersed into the first-person narration may put off those
who prefer straightforward storytelling.
Semi-autobiographical (the protagonist is even called Jeanette), Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is
a coming-of-age story about an girl who was adopted in infancy by a
radically evangelical woman in an isolated rural area in the North of
England. Jeanette is raised according to the fanatical religious
beliefs of her mother, a woman so rigid that oranges are the only fruit
she will eat. Jeanette eagerly participates in church and likes being
among the saved until she realizes as a teenager that she loves members
of her own sex, and her mother and congregation try to exorcise her
"demons." Able by then to think for herself and brave enough to follow
her heart, Jeanette steps out of her restricted confines.
Quirky, often funny, and sometimes sad, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
won England's Whitbread Prize for Best First Fiction.
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