Christine Reynier. Jeanette Winterson: Le Miracle Ordinaire. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2004

Abstract

There have been a number of recent book-length studies of Jeanette Winterson's fiction, including good work by Merja Makinen (2005), Susana Onega (2006) and Sonya Andermahr (2007 and2009). It is noteworthy that Christine Reynier's fine study appeared as the first in this sequence, in France in 2004; the English texts are cited here in French translation, making this an accessible introduction to a major contemporary writer for French readers (and those who read French). The book is an enthusiastic endorsement of Winterson's work, covering the first decade of her writing, from her celebrated debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1990) to The PowerBook (2000). Christine Reynier leaves us in no doubt that she regards Winterson as a major talent, and gives no house room to those critics who have found her more recent work full of grandiose involution, or showings signs of a writer in decline. (The Guardian's reviewer James Wood suggested as early as 1997 that "Winterson's novels have become increasingly conservative" and that she had begun to adopt a form of "sentimental exoticism" [Wood 1997]). For Reynier, on the contrary, Winterson creates "un monde merveilleux, féerique ou fantastique" which leaves readers "à bout de souffle et enchantés" (11).Rather than deal with each novel in turn, the book blends discussion of the various texts under a series of headings. Winterson is seen first as a satirist, who condemns and mocks all forms of oppression and repression to the point of questioning the very nature of authority. It is easy to see how this satirical approach operates in Oranges JEANETTE WINTERSON: LE MIRACLE ORDINAIRE