Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Softcover

Winterson, Jeanette

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9780802120878: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Synopsis

A New York Times bestseller: The "magnificent" memoir by one of the bravest and most original writers of our time—"A tour de force of literature and love" (Vogue).

One of the New York Times' "50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years"

Jeanette Winterson's bold and revelatory novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. Her internationally best-selling debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, and has become a staple of required reading in contemporary fiction classes.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a "singular and electric" memoir about a life's work to find happiness (The New York Times). It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the universe as a cosmic dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past, rose to haunt the author later in life, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also a book about the power of literature, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, or a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.

Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded story of the search for belonging—for love, identity, home, and a mother.

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About the Author

Born in Manchester in 1959 and adopted into a firmly religious family, JEANETTE WINTERSON put herself through higher education and studied at Oxford University. She is the author of numerous novels, including Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Sexing the Cherry, and The Passion. Winterson lives in Gloucestershire, UK.

Visit her website at jeanettewinterson.com

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780802120106: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0802120105 ISBN 13:  9780802120106
Publisher: Grove Press, 2012
Hardcover