Re-read 2024 for my OU course and I'm adding a star, as I liked it much better this time around. I think the bits I wanted to be stated in a more clear cut fashion on a first read are in fact presented as the protagonist feeling her way and at times believing two things at once. I didn't actually skip the fairy tale sections this time around, but I do wish they had been shorter.

2014: I found it hard to read this as fiction, since it is (I understand) closely based on the author's own experiences. The first third was a very amusing account of Jeanette's childhood with a father who barely existed in the text and a mother whose focus is the mission field and who has adopted Jeanette to prepare her for becoming a missionary herself. The tone is one of dry detachment, which works well for stories such as Jeanette going deaf and her mother assuming she is instead having a deep religious experience, Jeanette failing to fit in at school, her mother's attitude to Next Door etc.

Then Jeanette gets older and I found it hard to work out what she really thought about the church. She becomes a preacher and evangelist in her local community at around the same time that she is discovering she is a lesbian and starts having relationships with girls. There is no exploration of whether Jeanette struggled with what the bible has to say about this - she just repeats "to the pure, all things are pure".

Her first relationship is discovered, her mother and pastor sweep in and try to exorcise her and this is described in the same detached way. Jeanette talks to different coloured demons and gives in as it is easier. She goes back to preaching (really?) and, in what I think is a truly excellent section, breaks with the church when her mother blames Jeanette's sexuality on the fact that women have had inappropriately prominent roles in their church, which should have been reserved for men.

The final chapter, which shows Jeanette returning home for Christmas after living away for a few years contains no resolution. Her mother has not changed, Jeanette has not changed, you have to read really carefully to work out that her father is still on the scene. It is not clear how her mother has decided to let Jeanette even enter the house.

I was disappointed with this book. I tried really hard for the first few "fairy tale" sections to work out how they related to the main story; by the end I was skipping them. ( )

Non ci sono solo le arance è il libro che dovete leggere se non siete convintə del potere delle storie. Si tratta di un romanzo autobiografico dove Winterson racconta della sua esperienza di ragazza lesbica cresciuta in una famiglia (e in una comunità) pentecostale e sottoposta al feroce bigottismo della madre. Per sapere cosa c’è di vero e cosa di rielaborato, vi consiglio poi la lettura di Perché essere felice quando puoi essere normale? che io da brava rincoglionita ha letto per primo, perdendomi tutti i riferimenti a Non ci sono solo le arance.

Purtroppo molta dell’omofobia raccontata in questo romanzo è accaduta davvero, ma non è l’aspetto si cui si focalizza Winterson. O meglio, certamente occupa una parte importante in Non ci sono solo le arance, ma il focus è sulle storie, sulla loro importanza e sul loro potere. Winterson ci racconta di come alcune grandi storie, come quelle bibliche, siano diventate ormai sacre e intoccabili, cristallizzate nella loro interpretazione religiosa tanto da diventare delle vere e proprie prigioni, dalle quali evadere espone al rischio di terribili punizioni.

Non aspettatevi perciò il classico romanzo dove la ragazza lesbica riesce a liberarsi della famiglia bigotta e oppressiva grazie all’amore. Il punto di Winterson rimane sempre la dimostrazione del potere delle storie: di quelle che finiscono per fare del male perché contribuiscono alla perpetrazione di un sistema di valori ormai così avulso dalla realtà da piegare le vite delle persone in pochi modelli e ruoli stabiliti; ma anche di quelle che fanno del bene, che ti raccontano che va tutto bene, che oltre il canone della normalità ci può essere la quadratura del cerchio che stai cercando, che le possibilità non sono esaurite da una singola raccolta di storie.

Le storie sono potenti perché raccontandoti rendono reale quel groviglio di identità che ti sembra così alieno e pericoloso che solo a nominarlo ad alta voce sembra poter inghiottire la tua vita per intero. Invece no, non è niente di spaventoso: è il tuo confine, il punto di partenza della tua identità che ti permette di navigare con tranquillità, curiosità e rispetto sulle storie deə altrə. E quando poi dalla tua barchetta in mezzo al mare ti volti a guardare le vecchie storie della tua adolescenza, le trovi tragicamente grottesche nella loro pervicacia di fare del male in nome del loro appiattimento su un unico modo di essere.

Non ci sono solo le arance è un inno al potere salvifico delle storie che raccontano la diversità, che confondo i confini e che fanno esplodere le possibilità. Per questo ə estremistə sono così ossessionatə dai libri femministi e queer e non vedono l’ora di bannarli e denigrarli, lamentandosi della loro esistenza e piagnucolando del loro successo. È ovvio che i giardini deə vicinə, più verdi e pieno di fiori colorati, messi a confronto con i loro orticelli pieni di erbacce faccia loro perdere consensi, seguaci e potere: il vero peccato capitale del quale si macchia ogni minoranza che si rifiuti di stare confinata nel silenzio e nella negazione. ( )

This is the story of a young girl growing up in a very strange family where her mother is a fanatical Pentecostal Born Again Christian and has chosen to adopt Jeanette in order to bring her up as a missionary to preach in Africa etc. Jeanette's home education revolves around this and leaves her with strange gaps in her knowledge despite her innate curiosity, and no means of relating to children outside the community. Everyone she knows is much older than her and involved in their church. Eventually her mother is forced by the local authority to send her to school, but Jeanette's religious views disturb both the other children and the teachers and form an insurmountable barrier. It is not until she is a teenager and meets another girl her own age that she forms her first real emotional attachment - which becomes a physical relationship and leads to the beginning of her estrangement from her upbringing.

In between this we have various mythical interludes, mainly based on the Arthurian legends, which reminded me of some of Jane Yolen's fiction. I'm afraid I couldn't really work out exactly how these related to the story.

My main problem was that the distancing slightly jokey tone of the book meant that I couldn't really relate to the character. Even when she is betrayed by her friend, it seems a bit superficial and skated over, and I couldn't help contrasting this to the TV adaptation in which that part of the story - with the 'exorcism' by the awful pastor and her mother etc - was horrifying and traumatic. Those characters simply don't come across with the same level of awfulness as I recall from the dramatised version. Her exploitation by an older lesbian who exploits her while seeming to offer her refuge is also very low key and treated incidentally. The ending is also rather odd as she has had to leave and fend for herself, but then goes back and her mother is suddenly quite all right towards her and the whole thing just stops with no conclusive ending as if a page was missing. I'm afraid this was one of the few instances for me where the TV version was better than the book so I can only give it a 3 star rating. ( )

I went into this only knowing "classic British lesbian novel" so I was surprised to find that although it's an *important* part of the book, most of the attention is not really on lesbian stuff and in some ways any other reason you might leave a cultish religious community could stand in for it. Most of the book is a sensitive and well observed portrait of life growing up in an Evangelical community in a small town. There's a lot of Characters, even when they only get a few lines. There's attention paid to the backdrop of changes and the regular social life of the town. Most notably it's told with a lot of laugh out loud humour while still always feeling real and sincere. The complex emotions around not living up to your family's expectation and the struggle with leaving behind a community that's rejected you are well shown. I'm not feeling very articulate today but there's a lot here, all great and really well told and thoughtful. ( )

Jeanette Winterson does an excellent job narrating her first book. Authors who narrate their own books can be disappointing but luckily for me not in this case.

At first I found the interpolation of short bits of other stories (such as Sir Percival) confusing and irritating but as the book progressed, the connections between these and the main plot became intriguing.

( )