While I finished reading Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson a week ago, I could not motivate to post a review. At the book club meeting, I discovered that only Partner to-be (PTB) and I had finished the book. He and I had talked about the book a bit before attending the meeting. He was nervous about talking badly about the book at his first meeting; I assured him that there would be a variety of opinions. Unfortunately, we ended up being in a fishbowl with our opinions. The discussion lasted about fifteen minutes. It is tough to have a book club discussion when less than 30% of participants have completed the book.
One of the biggest questions we had was the gender of the narrator. We both had reasons for thinking the narrator was male or female, but could not say for sure. We both agreed that the writing was beautiful, but it was hard to feel sympathy for the main character. I enjoyed the end of the book more than the first. I really appreciated that the author did not force a happy ending. PTB disagreed with me a bit because he noted that the book began with a statement about not having cliches, but ended with a big cliche.
I wrote about this book during two Sunday Salons; you can read those posts here and here.
In addition to reading this book for the book club meeting, I also read it as part of the
Orbis Terrarum challenge.