My dad is the world’s biggest Jeanette Winterson fan. I’ve been lucky enough to meet loads of writers, but for some reason I’ve never met her. I think until I do he won’t consider me a proper author. :)
I won’t forget how disappointed he was when he wrote her a fan letter and she didn’t reply. When I was fourteen I wrote John Irving a fan letter and he didn’t reply. Occasionally I get fan letters. I’m not very good at replying. It makes me feel bad.
Anyway, two of her books, The Passion and, especially, Sexing the Cherry are completely and undeniably amazing; entirely fresh and perfect in themselves. My dad buys everything she does, which is why I’ve found myself (pre second hand rifling) starting on Tanglewreck, her book for younger readers.
It’s about time travel, one of my favourite book subjects, and it’s by the mighty Winterson. But somehow it’s not working for me. It reads very strongly like it was Written For Children, and characters say Children’s Literature Things like ‘here we be, young miss’. Some of the language is weirdly young- ‘and then he said ‘YUK” -for a book without pictures. And the ideas- orphans, sinister men in pursuit, people who live underground- don’t seem as fresh as they ought and the language feels constrained for someone who’s imagery and imagination are so vast and extraordinary.
I think oddest of all is that, in fact, both the Passion and Sexing the Cherry can and ought to be read by bright eleven year olds, even if they don’t catch it all- children can deal perfectly with fractured narratives and unreal situations and words they don’t understand. Look at the success of the amazing Spirited Away. Tanglewreck is, weirdly, in the end just too linear.
Which is a shame because I LOVE time travel in books.
Five amazing time travel books:
Time and Again by Jack Finney.
It’s the humourless insistence of this book, that this is what Si has actually done makes it so convincing, along with the period postcards and pictures he inserts. You can absolutely lose yourself in it and believe it to be true; that at the end of the 60s, the US government sent a man back to 1882 Manhattan.
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
A breathtaking exercise in style that requires reading twice immediately.
The Time-Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
I am often wrong on these things but I knew this was going to be huge when I cried so hard at the crash scene that a cabbie asked me if I was okay. I met her at a book party just before it came out in the UK (I’d had an early copy) and made a complete idiot of myself drooling over how great it was. It is, but.
One mark of how influential it’s been is the work of Stephen Moffatt, resident genius at Doctor Who. His last three masterpieces have directly referenced it- in The Girl in the Fireplace, the doctor misses his time with Madame de Pompadour; in Blink, Sally Sparrow has a date with the police officer, then five minutes later sees him on his death bed, and in Silence in the Library, Alex Kingston’s character River Song says it’s the first time the doctor has met her, implying a love affair through time.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
I loved this as a child- reading it again as an adult I couldn’t see why I was just so fascinated. But I certainly was, I reread it countless times.
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper.
I’m going to talk about this series more later probably. But for now, just remember and relish that very first morning of Will’s in the mediaeval Thames valley, stepping out in that untouched pure white snow of a morning he shouldn’t be in from long long ago. Or when Miss Greythorne’s Christmas party melts into one from the past, with such tragic consequences.
Yeah, you know, when Nintendo can replicate those feelings for an eight year old, I’ll consider letting my kids having one.
Right, MUST do some real work.
