Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409088561
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Formats & editions
Paperback
29 Oct 2024
Paperback
18 Jan 2022
Paperback
1 Nov 2014
Hardback
29 Apr 2025
EBook
1 Sep 2010
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'Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what' Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

'Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what'

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.

At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.

'Witty… extraordinary and exhilarating' The Times

'She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides' Vanity Fair

'Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming' Evening Standard

'A novel that deserves revisiting' Observer

'A wonderful rites-of-passage novel' Mariella Frostrup
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409088561
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240
Categories:

About the author

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn’t work out.

Discovering early the power of books she left home at 16 to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at 25. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. 27 years later she re-visited that material in the bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.

She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.

portrait photo of Jeanette Winterson

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Praise for Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming

Evening Standard

She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides

Vanity Fair

Even at a time when so many good and interesting novels are coming out, hers stand out as performances of real originality and extraordinary promise

John Bayley

Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming

Evening Standard

wonderful rites-of-passage novel... where the author's blossoming Sapphic nature leads her to eschew her mothers proffered favourite

Mariella Frostrup

Even at a time when so many good and interesting novels are coming out, hers stand out as performances of real originality and extraordinary promise

John Bayley

Still extraordinary, still brilliant

Metro

Wonderful rites-of-passage novel... where the author's blossoming Sapphic nature leads her to eschew her mothers proffered favourite

Mariella Frostrup

An novel that deserves revisiting...Winterson maintains a balance of tone, a trueness of voice... It remains one of the finest things Winterson has written

Natasha Tripney, Observer

Still extraordinary, still brilliant

Metro

It is very funny, with an Alan Bennett sort of humour, beautifully written, quirky and likely to cause much tuttutting in conservative quarters

Daily Mail

A novel that deserves revisiting...Winterson maintains a balance of tone, a trueness of voice... It remains one of the finest things Winterson has written

Observer

This lesbian coming of age story set in northern England doesn't seem to have aged a bit.

Katy Guest, The Independent

It is very funny, with an Alan Bennett sort of humour, beautifully written, quirky and likely to cause much tuttutting in conservative quarters

Daily Mail

She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides

Muriel Spark, Vanity Fair

This lesbian coming of age story set in northern England doesn't seem to have aged a bit

Independent

An instant classic

Rosemary Goring, Herald

You'll find everything you need to know about mustering the courage to embrace your true self and live life without fear in Winterson's hugely engaging semi-autobiographical novel

Mariella Frostrup, Sunday Times

Characterised by Winterson’s bold and experimental style, this is a book with darkness and light about what it means to live your own truth

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