The Passion: Jeanette Winterson (Vintage Blue, 13)

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The second part is called The Queen of Spades and it follows a Venetian boatman's daughter called Villanelle. Venice is described as a curious place with a lot of different interesting people; the city is compared to a maze. Interesting boatman trait is that they are born with webbed feet that allow them to walk on water. That's why boatmen never take off their shoes.

One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Winterson was named as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in a promotion run jointly between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council. Stuart Jeffries (22 February 2010). "Jeanette Winterson: 'I thought of suicide' ". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 21 July 2013 . Retrieved 15 August 2011. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once-loved, it’s for yourself too; how could you have ever loved this?’

In between freezing and melting. In between love and despair. In between fear and sex, passion is." In between freezing and melting. In between love and despair. In between fear and sex, passion is.’

This is a strange, mystical, and eponymously passionate book, with recurring lines that are almost liturgical. Sometimes the exact same word or phrase is repeated, but other times they weave a subtly different route every time, like the enchanted streets and canals of the city itself, especially these variations: Winterson is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent deeply abides." — Vanity Fair First published to great acclaim in 1987, this arresting, elegant novel from Jeanette Winterson uses Napolean’s Europe as the setting for a tantalizing surrealistic romance between an observer of history and a creature of fantasy. Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny. Winterson’s writing is exceptional. Here, you can see that even our mysterious heroine, in spite of her special senses, is not immune to the terrors of the night.What is freedom? “To love someone else is to forget about yourself… through the flesh we are set free. Our desire for another will lift us out of ourselves more cleanly than anything divine.” He made the Emperor laugh and the horse couldn’t better him, so he stayed. And I stayed. And we became friends.

Villanelle, the gambler who loses her heart to the Queen of Spades, might be described as bisexual, although her fluidity and her cross-dressing subvert gender identities and boundaries not in the sense of hiding one’s sex, but in the way of challenging the male/female, truth/disguise, inner/outer binaries. I can see where the narrative voice of Written on the Body came about. It makes me want to reread it! Winterson refers to the cities of the interior several times, mentioning that there is no map for the interior. This seems like the mind, where you can have grand adventures and travel great distances without ever leaving your home. You can also get lost there and never find your way out. Villanelle traveled the interior canals of Venice through intuition and many years of experience. Gadher, Dipesh (26 October 2008). "Lesbian novelist Jeanette Winterson planned last visit to dying ex-lover". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016 . Retrieved 17 March 2011. Winterson's 2012 novella The Daylight Gate, based on the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials, appeared on their 400th anniversary. Its main character, Alice Nutter, is based on the real-life woman of the same name. The Guardian's Sarah Hall describes the work: Maya Jaggi (29 May 2004). "Saturday Review: Profile: Jeanette Winterson". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013 . Retrieved 4 December 2008.

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Passion will not be commanded. It is no genie to grant us three wishes when we let it loose. It commands us and very rarely in the way we would choose.” They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true… how could we ever recover from the wonder of it?”

What am I interested in? Passion. Obsession… The dividing line is as thin and cruel as a Venetian knife.” Since Bonaparte captured our city of mazes in 1797, we’ve more or less abandoned ourselves to pleasure. What else is there to do when you’ve lived a proud and free life and suddenly you’re not proud and free any more? We became an enchanted island for the mad, the rich, the bored, the perverted. Our glory days were behind us but our excess was just beginning. disputing the notion that women have no place in the patriarchy’s map of the world or in the making of history. After all, “the women, they're always the clever ones”. This passage almost perfectly expresses Villanelle’s story, having her heart of fire in passion but then having to leave it outside herself. Literally. The two narratives inform upon each other in ways that enhance each theme, allow for a multitude of vantage points on the ideas and become a joint commentary greater than the sum of their convergences. The novel, told in retrospect, also charmingly finds certain lines of narration to be borrowed from other character’s speech when the storylines finally intersect. Henri’s musings on if no two snowflakes truly are the same early in the novel seems to have been informed by something Villanelle says when they meet: ‘ ’Snowflakes. Think of that.’ I did think of that and I fell in love with her.’ There is a lasting bond between characters that transcends even their words when we see their word choice being indebted to their feelings for the other. I read Villanelle’s character more as a comment on sexual identity, desire, and gender performance, while Henri’s narrative was as a postmodern construct through and through. Taking on themes such as history and war, experience and passion, one you can dissect to no end if we throw metafiction into the game. Which I won’t, however much temped… I will say that I particularly liked the way he portrayed his mother and his comments on the war’s dehumanizing of women (“Even the women without ambition wanted something more than to produce boys to be killed and girls to grow up to produce more boys”), particularly in the way the army treats the women brought in the camps. Winterson takes apart Henri’s masculinity, portraying him as a sensitive character with a distaste for war’s aggressions.

The falling away from Napoleon is entrenched in the realization that the powerful use the lives of those beneath them for their own purposes, and there is no end to their greed. ‘ I thought he’d end wars forever,’ Henri muses on being duped when he realizes ‘ one more and then there’ll be peace but it’s always one more.’ He also recognizes there is no end to wars once they begin, and victory means endlessly defending territory populated by those who hate you. The passionate intenisty of warmaking begins to be paralleled with the act of gambling in Villanelle’s storyline, in which she insists ‘ gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness…some do it at the gambling table, some do not.’ She tells a story of a mysterious gambler, one of the most standout moments in the book, honestly, and the juxtaposition between war and gambling begins to truly shine. I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind.” The Passion is a novel by Jeannette Winterson that places a magical realist perspective on the period of the Napoleonic Wars in France. Structured in alternating segments by two narrators, it follows Henri, a member of Napoleon Bonaparte's kitchen staff who later joins his army, and Villanelle, a Venetian woman who passes as a man to enjoy the privileges and protections of Venetian men.