First Impressions Review: The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson

 

“I’m telling you stories. Trust me.”

            This is a gorgeous little book. The evocative language and the odd events create a magical feeling; while I would ordinarily read a book this length in a day or so, this one took me four because I felt the need to savor it. Part one is from the point of view of Henri, a French villager who has joined Napoleon’s army and has seen his enthusiasm for the great man wane, and even begin turning to hate. The second follows Villanelle, a bisexual Venetian girl who has inherited the webbed feet of her gondolier father, and who works in a casino. And the third section brings these two characters together in the unlikeliest way…

            The first lines of the book make clear that Henri’s role in the army is certainly not the glorious one he probably dreamed of:

“It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock…I started as a neck wringer and before long I was the one who carried the platter through inches of mud to his tent…He did not dislike me. He liked no one except Josephine¹ and he liked her the way he liked chicken.”

With the other young men he tries to shut down his heart to deal with all the violence and ugliness of war, but it is clear that he is not very good at that.

 

1. There is a scene of Josephine playing pool – with a masterful grace – with Talleyrand. I don’t know if that is historically accurate, but I love it!

 

            The blurb on the back states that Villanelle’s husband gambled away her heart, but that is incorrect! She gambled it away herself, losing it to a married woman.

“’Play again’?...Only for a second she touched me and then she was gone and I was left with my heart smashing at my chest and three-quarters of a bottle of the best champagne. I was careful to conceal both.” Not being able to follow her passion, she married a rather unpleasant fellow who liked the way she dressed as a boy in the casino, but…well, to say too much more would be a spoiler! Suffice to say, her husband sold her, which is how she ended up meeting Henri. They walk all the way from Russia to Venice. Once there, she asks him to steal her heart back, which turns out to be more literal than he expects.

            This book treats the subject of passion, whether romantic passion or passion for a cause, in sort of the Ancient Greek way – as a kind of glorious madness, something that is addictively pleasurable and utterly contrary to reason, and therefore never to be trusted.

Villanelle: “Queen of spades you win, Ace of clubs you lose…What will you risk?...I like to smell the urgency on them…It’s somewhere between fear and sex. Passion, I suppose.”

Henri: “Why would a people who love the grape and the sun die in the zero winter for one man? Why did I? Because I loved him. He was my passion and when we go to war we feel we are not a lukewarm people any more.”

Villanelle: “Love is a fashion these days, and in this fashionable city we know how to make light of love and how to keep our hearts at bay. I thought of myself as a civilized woman and I found I was a savage. When I thought of losing her I wanted to drown both of us in some lonely place rather than feel myself a beast that has no friend…There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance.”

The ending is bittersweet, as perhaps a story with such an outlook must be, but satisfying nonetheless.

 

Overall recommendation: Whether you like magical realism, prose that is sensual without being purple, sapphic romance, historical fiction, or stories with things to say about a concept or philosophical idea…you should give this little book a try!