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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Community Reviews back

by Jeanette Winterson
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Bloodorange
Bloodorange rated it 9 years ago
I read Why Be Happy immediately after rereading [b:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit|15055|Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit|Jeanette Winterson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1267717580s/15055.jpg|1411520] for the first time since I was nineteen. I remember going through a Winterson ‘phase’ when I was a st...
meganbaxter
meganbaxter rated it 11 years ago
When a memoir starts with a title like that, it's apparent it's not going to be all sweetness and light. Particularly when it's fairly quickly on the table that it is Jeanette Winterson's adoptive mother who said the titular line. With that established, this is obviously not a slight read, slim thou...
Gayla
Gayla rated it 11 years ago
I had every intention of loving this book, but unfortunately it didn't grab me the way that Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit or her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? did. Winterson's writing in this novella is as vivid and evocative as always, but I wanted more charact...
deborahmarkus7
deborahmarkus7 rated it 11 years ago
Current review:One of those books that makes you want to read a paragraph aloud at least once a page. This book will make you annoying to your family. Read it anyway.Previous review:Just. Too. Good.I had to return it to the library today. I'm going to put it on my wish list so I'll have a copy of my...
Books etc.
Books etc. rated it 12 years ago
Having read Oranges and knowing her general history I thought this autobiography will be bitter, but it's not and I love it. There's this deep level of understanding on who Mrs. Winterson was and how she was; how the combination just sucks big time and "ruined" the relationship. But she's not blamin...
Ad Girl-Book Worm
Ad Girl-Book Worm rated it 12 years ago
DNF
pausetowonder
pausetowonder rated it 12 years ago
"Yet I would rather be this me -- the me that I have become -- than the me I might have become without... all the things that have happened to me along the way... I think I am lucky."That quotation carries a lot of weight when you learn some of the things she's been through. I don't usually read aut...
Kaethe
Kaethe rated it 12 years ago
Winterson had a dreadful start in life. The woman who raised her was hyper religious and distinctly odd. But, the consolation of a miserable friendless childhood is books, so there is a lot about reading here. The last third focuses on the search of Winterson's birth family, and just how bloody-mind...
Kinga's Reading
Kinga's Reading rated it 13 years ago
This is a book that you'll either love or hate and I fell into the former category. As a reader, we follow Jeanette Winterson as she grows up in, what can only be described as, a dysfunctional household where she's locked out on the front step overnight by her adopted mother. Fortunately, Ms Winters...
Osho
Osho rated it 13 years ago
A fascinating autobiography that illuminates the author's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit. Winterson knows how to turn a phrase, and though this story sometimes spends too long on philosophical abstractions and psychodynamic interpretation as it nears its end, it still holds together nicely. A good a...
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