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The Passion
by: Jeanette Winterson

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780802135223
ISBN: 0802135226
Label: Grove Press
Manufacturer: Grove Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: August 07, 1997
Publisher: Grove Press
Sales Rank: 18170
Studio: Grove Press

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Editorial Review:

Product 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.

Amazon.com Review:
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

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Exciting and Memorable
My creative writing professor lent me this book because she thought I would like it. It's not that I didn't believe her when she told me it was really good but I was still surprised at just how good it really was. There is something very poetic about the way Winterson writes. The language is musical and compact. I was truly shocked when I found out that she didn't write poetry and that made her that much more talented in my eyes. There aren't that many prose writers that can use precise, musical language and get to the point fast without losing the readers interest and those that are able to walk the fine line between being narrative and being lyric without having a background in poetry are even more rare. Winterson and The Passion are truly delightful. The language, like I said, is wonderful. The imagery is inspiring. The plot is extremely interesting. I hadn't been this excited about a book in a long ... Read More

Rating:

- The Passion
The Passion
Among the absolutely best books I have ever read, as well as one of my favorites. Winterson masterfully entwines parallel analogies dealing with love, God, sex, war, gambling, and above all, passion--an intricate pattern of metaphors that powerfully express amazing perspectives on each. Winterson also manages to concoct brilliant expressions that succintly describe in a sentence or two the most incredible viewpoints. A fabulous must-read.

Rating:

- The Passion... well titled!
Let me start by saying that over the years I've read a few Jeanette Winterson novels and did not find them that interesting. This is certainly an exception.

For me, this is one of those stories that I can read over and over and continue to get enjoyment from.

The book intertwines the lives of a soldier and a Venetian woman during the Napoleonic wars; two people that are so different you would never expect them to make a connection. They embark on a love affair that they both know is destined to take them no where, but they cannot deny they have a passion for each other.

This novel is filled with beautiful quotes. Here's one of my favorites:
"When I fell in love it was as thought I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself."

I high recommend you take a chance and read this!

Rating:

- Good...but not that "good"...
This is certainly a provocative novel. From the gargantuan appetite of Bonaparte for chickens, the ethereal mystery that is the Empress Josephine, the transience of Venice (recall Calvino's Invisible Cities [and not because of his nationality...but hey...]), to the fantastical experiences of Henri and Villanelle, Winterson's novel reveals an incredible world in every chapter. In a way, it made me wonder if such things were indeed experienced in the Napoleonic years--in the back of my mind, I know that Patrick's eagle-eye (with its apparently helpless tendency to zone in on naked bodies), and Villanelle's webbed feet and her once-literally-taken-then-rescued heart are flights of fancy. But even so, Winterson's narrative has that indecipherable mesh of fact and unrealism that a reader can actually think, "why not?"

If one were to place emphasis on the themes of physical and emotional casualties brought ... Read More

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