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Title: Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0-679-77742-3 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 July, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.85 (20 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The quantum uncertainties of love and life
Comment: The title of Winterson's novel is a triple pun, referring to the twin themes of animal instinct and modern physics (Grand Unified Theory), and--in a bizarre plot twist--human innards. Most of the narrative is presented from the perspectives of two women: Stella, a poet married to a Princeton physicist, and Alice, a younger physicist who has an affair first with Stella's husband and then with Stella herself.
Presented nonlinearly, it's one of Winterson's more challenging novels, a scrapbook weaving scientific metaphors and cabalistic mysticism with the tangled associations of three generations of three different families. "I know I am a fool, trying to make connections out of scraps. . . . Am I vain enough to assume you will understand me? No. So I go on puzzling over new joints for words, hoping that this time, one piece will slide smooth against the next." Still, a thematically satisfying, often surprising plot emerges from the accumulated snippets of poetry, witticism, and musing. Even though the book's focus is certainly not its plot, all the bits and pieces eventually tie together in satisfying and unexpected ways.
If the novel has a shortcoming, it would be the sacrifice of characterization for thematic unity and postmodern cleverness. It's difficult at times to distinguish the two women (surprising in a novel by Winterson) and their family histories, and one is often forced to seek textual clues in order to determine whether the present narrator is the Jewish poet or the British scientist. Occasionally, however, emotions (and especially humor) surface above the ponderous rumination--for example, the "gut"-wrenching chapter in which Stella finds out about her husband's affair and conducts a physics experiment as conceived by an enraged poet: "If I drop a CD player and a lap top out of the same window at the same time which one will hit the ground first?"
"Gut Symmetries" rewards the persistent reader with memorable passages on love and physics, guilt and energy, poetry and mysticism. It's a novel many will want to reread for the Wildean wordplay and the Joycean artistry.
Rating: 5
Summary: A humdinger of a pleasure
Comment: __________
Fluff or Not? No matter - you won't be disappointed.
__________
This was my first foray into Winterson. I picked up this book by accident and almost missed out. This is a work in which to revel, wallow, and mark up - not to overanalyze, psychoanalyze, or moralize. Its not the plot, or even the intermingling of epic scientific theories as parallels for love, its purely the words. It's the magic that occurs when a word you've seen hundreds of times is set beside another ordinary word to form a string that is simply profound and surprisingly beautiful. Any writer able to wow with words like Winterson is deserves an unequivocal thumbs up. Don't pass this up - you'd be missing out.
+: beautiful prose, unconventional plot and method, interesting characters, human and scientific dilemmas
-: highly irregular rhythm and method, just be prepared to forsake the ordinary
Rating: 5
Summary: Can't beat Winterson!
Comment: Jeanette Winterson is one of the most talented and versatile writers of this era. I have read and loved her excellent novels. Gut Symmetries, though filled with Winterson's signature poetic and metaphorical prose, is somewhat different from her other efforts. Physics and romance intertwine in this book. What are the similarities between the aforementioned subjects? Could love be measured in the law of physics? As said earlier, this book has the author's signature poetic prose -- and the same is illustrated in outstanding proportions.
I marvel at Ms. Winterson's beautiful writing and overactive imagination. Her masterful work has a unique brand of magic realism all its own. Gut Symmetries illustrates this. I highly recommend this gem to people with a penchant for literary, intelligent reads.
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Title: The World and Other Places : Stories by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0375702369 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 20 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Passion by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0802135226 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0679762701 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 20 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0679744479 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0375725059 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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