JEANETTE WINTERSON is the author of ten novels, including Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, which has sold over a million copies, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry and Written on the Body, a book of short stories, The World and Other Places, a collection of essays, Art Objects, as well as many other works, including children’s books, screenplays and journalism. Her writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E. M. Forster Award and the Prix d'argent at Cannes Film Festival.

Jeanette Winterson, renowned for her piercing and lyrical fiction has published a memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? It is an extraordinary account of the story behind her acclaimed debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

When Jeanette finally left her home, at sixteen, because she was in love with a woman, her mother asked her: why be happy when you could be normal?  Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal is the story of a life’s work to find happiness. It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a tyrant in place of a mother, who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in an northern industrial town now changed beyond recognition, part of a community now vanished; about the Universe as a Cosmic Dustbin. It is the story of how the painful past Jeanette Winterson thought she had written over and repainted returned to haunt her later life, and sent her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her real mother. 

"...brave and beautiful, a testament to the forces of intelligence, heart and imagination." (The Spectator)


Read more about Jeanette Winterson....

Jeanette Winterson - Official Website

Jeanette Winterson - Facebook Page

The Guardian - Review of ‘Why be Happy...’ by Zoe Williams, 4 November 2011

The Guardian - Review of ‘Why be Happy...’ by Julie Myerson, 6 November 2011

The Independent - Review of ‘Why be Happy...’ by Fiona Sturges, 6 November 2011

BBC Video ‘Five Minutes with Jeanette Winterson’ 12 February 2011

The Telegraph - Interview with Jeanette Winterson by Tanya Gold, 28 October 2011


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