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Overview
Adding to an already astounding body of work that explores the nature of love and desire, Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion) presents a stunning novel that probes the boundaries of the Internet.Ali writes stories on email for anyone who wants them. She promises “freedom just for one night,” but she does not do so without a warning: the story might change you. Ask for an epic love story and you will get one, but Ali will be cast in it, too, and the lines between the real and imagined may blur. Plucking characters from history and myth, Winterson journeys through time and stops in London, Paris, and Capri, all the while melding the language of love with that of computers. In The PowerBook she has found a brilliant conceit through which to showcase her increasingly bold voice.
Synopsis
Adding to an already astounding body of work that explores the nature of love and desire, Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion) presents a stunning novel that probes the boundaries of the Internet.
Ali writes stories on email for anyone who wants them. She promises “freedom just for one night,” but she does not do so without a warning: the story might change you. Ask for an epic love story and you will get one, but Ali will be cast in it, too, and the lines between the real and imagined may blur. Plucking characters from history and myth, Winterson journeys through time and stops in London, Paris, and Capri, all the while melding the language of love with that of computers. In The PowerBook she has found a brilliant conceit through which to showcase her increasingly bold voice.
Book Magazine
Winterson's latest novel is a treasure chest of metaphors, puzzles and aphorisms. The framing story is about a writer (the narrator) who imagines herself and various cyber-correspondents as figures in tales of love. The book's structure, open to various readings, could be seen as a nod to the interactive books gaining popularity among cyber-aficionados. The electronic correspondence may be interpreted as a dialogue—literal or symbolic—between the narrator/writer and her married lover. (Problematic love has occupied this rebel lesbian author before, and her point is clear: All love is flawed in its own way.) The narrator repeatedly re-imagines both lover and love affair, but the roles she chooses are always tragic. Some may see the storyteller as a counselor, philosopher or technical writer for the love-worn, holding a prism to the light of love, intending both to shatter it and to reveal its enchantment.
—Padma Viswanathan
Editorials
From the Publisher
“A manifesto for bravery in love...beautiful writing.”–Los Angeles Times“Winterson writes about love the way van Gogh painted sun-flowers: lovingly, obsessively, always seeking a fresh way to present the subject.”–Entertainment Weekly
“Winterson is way ahead of most writers in finding new ways to tell a story.”–San Francisco Chronicle
Winterson's latest novel is a treasure chest of metaphors, puzzles and aphorisms. The framing story is about a writer (the narrator) who imagines herself and various cyber-correspondents as figures in tales of love. The book's structure, open to various readings, could be seen as a nod to the interactive books gaining popularity among cyber-aficionados. The electronic correspondence may be interpreted as a dialogue—literal or symbolic—between the narrator/writer and her married lover. (Problematic love has occupied this rebel lesbian author before, and her point is clear: All love is flawed in its own way.) The narrator repeatedly re-imagines both lover and love affair, but the roles she chooses are always tragic. Some may see the storyteller as a counselor, philosopher or technical writer for the love-worn, holding a prism to the light of love, intending both to shatter it and to reveal its enchantment.
—Padma Viswanathan
Publishers Weekly
Composed in tight, spare prose echoing Web communications, Winterson's seventh novel takes its cues from the Internet, where reality is implied but never inherent. Like the protagonist of her previous novel, Written on the Body, narrator Ali is not defined by sex. An Internet writer, she/he creates stories for people, offering "Freedom, just for one night," allowing her e-mail clients to be whoever they want to be. In return, they are required to understand that, like customers at Verde, the famous old costume shop in London where Ali lives, they may enter as themselves and leave as someone else. Such is the transformation Ali undergoes after a brief liaison in Paris with a married woman. Falling desperately in love, Ali follows the unnamed woman to Capri and attempts to convince her to leave her husband. Entwining this love story with accounts of Turkish tulip bulbs disguised as testicles, and tales of Lancelot and Guinevere, Winterson treads a slippery slope between linear storytelling and multidimensional cyberfiction. Most conventional, but also most egregious, is a digression recounting Ali's childhood as the adopted daughter of scrap-yard owners who are terrified of straying out into the Wilderness (the real world), but still hope that one day their daughter will find the Promised Land that exists in the heart. Winterson's dashing, sensually stylish writing is marred by heavy-handed symbolism, but the concept of transformation is adeptly juggled throughout. The brightly colored jacket, featuring two suggestively limp tulips, plays directly to the sensibility of Winterson's many fans. (Nov. 3) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Winterson (The Passion; Art & Lies) here employs the vast protean realm of cyberspace, once again weaving a metaphorical flight of words and images, of love and longing. The plot that lines this slim but profoundly textured novel involves Ali, an e-mail writer who will compose anything you like--in the case that launches this tale, an aborted love story of tulips--whereas you may be any figure in your invented life. But, be warned, how you enter will not be how you leave, and Ali learns that not even the writer is immune to this caveat. Winterson captivates and engages, submerging the reader in her sure and golden prose and interspersing classical and contemporary myths and fairytales between love and loss in Paris and Capri--experiences that become flesh while the Internet is just an instrument analogous to pen and paper. Stirring and passionate, this volume is nevertheless light in bulk, belying the sensual body of the text and the intense power of its flow. The unconventional, though wholly Winterson, narration addresses the reader and proclaims the certainty of tides; it dares, "You can change the story. You are the story . Open it. Read it. This is the true history of the world."--Ann Kim, "Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\From The Critics
An email writer will compose any story line - provided the person is prepared to enter the story and be changed. That's the outline for the novel Powerbook, but the descriptions are far more surreal and fluid than the premise seems, and enthusiasts of literary works who seek complex plots with metaphor and innuendo will find Powerbook satisfyingly mysterious.Rein Turn
There is in all of Winterson's books a stong, deep sense of purpose, a faith in beauty, order, clarity, and a talent for self-projection that is energising and exciting.—London Review of Books