Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

Jen Campbell constantly talks about Jeanette Winterson on her booktube channel, so when I found a copy at the nearby secondhand bookshop, I snatched it up.

This story is about love. It follows an unnamed narrator and his love affair with a married woman. But it is so much more than that.

You said, ‘I love you.’ Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them but now I am alone on a rock hewn out of my own body.”

― Jeanette Winterson, Written On The Body

The language in this book is spectacular. The thoughts on love, real love, are magnificent too. I would read a few lines, and then look around to find someone who had made the silly mistake of sitting down somewhere near me so that I could read to them.

“You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so how could we take it back without asking?”

― Jeanette Winterson, Written On The Body

I appreciated the conversation about love. It was thought-provoking. I enjoyed the story for itself too, even though romance is not my genre.

If there is anything I could fault, it was that I felt the description and detail of his love for Louise was just dragged out a bit too much - I am talking about the biological part of the novel. I felt I had got the point, and was more interested in what would happen.

I good read overall, and I will definitely keep an eye out for more books by Winterson. This one, I would recommend to people who love good language in books. This is probably not such an easy read, compared to most books out there.