"Why be happy when you can be normal?"; Mrs. Winterson asked her daughter Jeanette when, at 16, she confessed to falling in love with a girl. The writer has written her own autobiography, a memoir, a life story, except for the 25 years-in-between.
“I was born in Manchester in 1959, and six months later I was adopted by John W. Winterson, 40 years old, and Constance Winterson, 37 years old. They lived in a townhouse in Accrington.” The parents were fanatical Evangelical Pentecostals and wanted their adopted daughter to be a missionary. The mother had a strict and peculiar religious morality: through punishments, reprimands, etc. she made Jeanette's childhood miserable. There were no books in the house, only the Bible, although Jeanette would secretly read at night. “My mother did not love life, she was depressed and had a very personal view of the book of Revelation. I was a strange child and needed love, but I couldn't find it, because my parents didn't love me. When my mother got angry she would say. "The devil took us to the wrong cot."
When she was 16, she was thrown out of the house with no other means, because the family was poor, but the books will help her. Jeanette had an ambition to be a writer, she would read a lot: books will be her home.
At one point she was encouraged to write, with considerable success. Her mother said that her great triumph, "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit", was the work of the devil. A teacher will take her home and help her get into Oxford, with a place as a writer. Her love life, which is present throughout the story, is centred on her love for women; she will have several girlfriends. Because of a series of problems she will try to take her own life. But later, having achieved success, she lacks the most important thing, to look for her biological mother, who she knows is still alive. It is well written, although with a little disorder, as are the memories. It includes interesting ideas about literature, books, home,... although it is quite wrecked in the loving and sentimental aspects of life. Pentecostal doctrine is explained in great detail, as being very different from the Catholic religion. It has frequent sensual notes.