"Oranges are not the only Fruit".

Jeanette Winterson's book was very successful when it was published. At first, I couldn’t understand why. Female homosexuality is hardly the stuff that could, by itself, propel a book to the best-seller list in 1985, almost twenty years after the sexual revolution of the Sixties. 

To make matters worse, the love life of the main protagonist is neither explicitly described nor sentimentality analyzed. We just know that she “did it”. 

To make matters even worse, Jeanette Winterson flies at a tangent into a world of medieval fantasies. Descriptions and situations are dealt in ways that are neither poetic nor atmospheric. We are informed of what’s going on, but we never feel it.

Reflections on life in general sprout here and there as in a jungle where readers must progress with mental machetes. The plot (if you can call it that) is more like an unruly, disheveled diary. It does not really end : it fizzles out. 

So, why do I feel (as do many others) that “Oranges” will stick in my mind, and stay with me ?

To start with, it is well written. Perfect, well-balanced sentences, irreproachable grammar and syntax, but this is not unusual. 

The main reason, I suspect, lies in the fact that the main character is neither the narrator, nor her deranged mother : it is Pastor Spratt. He is the epicenter of a dictatorial, intolerant, imaginary world where human warmth and charity have no place. It’s easy to imagine what would have happened to Jeanette in the Middle-Ages (and beyond) : one more witch burned at the stake, and Pastor Spratt conducting the church choir while the girl died in unspeakable pain. 

Terrifying religious nuts like Pastor Spratt have always been around, and are still very much with us. Nowadays, they have a tendency to be replaced by political nuts, but the tactics remain the same : self-righteous indignation, outrageous lies and accusations, followed by ostracism and persecution for those who do not agree, all this in the name of equality and tolerance. 

“Oranges” is not a novel about lesbians, it’s a masterful warning about the evils of fanaticism and brain-washing.