Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Unforgettable… It’s the best book I have ever read about the cost of growing up. – Daisy Goodwin * Sunday Times *A searingly felt and expressed autobiography…Funny and profoundly hopeful – a tale of survival – Kate Hamer * Metro *This book is good, sensible, beautiful company… Try this – A.L. Kennedy * Week *Jeanette Winterson’s writing is poetic, emotive and beautiful * So Many Books So Little Time (blog) *Incredibly moving and full of Winterson’s characteristic wit. * Elle *A memoir of a childhood shot through with fire-and-brimstone parenting, resilience and survival. The disturbing portrait of her adoptive mother is balanced by Winterson’s crisp wit. – Juliet Nicolson * Week *Jeanette Winterson is a uniquely brilliant writer. She has such a mischievous sense of humour – Amelia Abraham * Buro *Vivid, unpredictable, and sometimes mind-rattling memoir… This book… which had been funny enough to make me laugh out loud more times than is advisable on the No 12 bus - turns into something raw and unnerving – Julie Myerson * Observer *This is certainly the most moving book of Winterson’s I have ever read… but it wriggles with humour… At one point I was crying so much I had tears in my ears. There is much here that is impressive, but what I find most unusual about it is the way it deepens one’s sympathy, for everyone involved – Zoe Williams * Guardian *In the 26 years since the publication of her highly acclaimed first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has proved herself a writer of startling invention, originality and style. Her combination of the magical and the earthy, the rapturous and the matter-of-fact, is unique. It is a strange and felicitous gift, as if the best of Gabriel Garcia Marquez was combined with the best of Alan Bennett… This remarkable account is, among other things, a powerful argument for reading… This memoir is brave and beautiful, a testament to the forces of intelligence, heart and imagination. It is a marvellous book and generous one * Spectator *

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. She published her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, at twenty-five. Over two decades later she revisited that material in her internationally bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson has written thirteen novels for adults and two previous collections of short stories, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.

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