The husband does not appear much in the book, as he did not have great an influence on Winterson’s life. She and her husband were the worst sort of religious people – fervently Christian, avid bible-readers and abusive to their adoptive daughter. She describes her adoptive mother as a ‘ flamboyant depressive a woman who kept a revolver in the duster drawer and bullets in a tin of Pledge.” This was a woman who would stay up all night baking so she didn’t have to share the bed with her husband, and who had two sets of false teeth, one for everyday life, the others for guests. Winterson was adopted by a couple who should never had had children and who live in the grim, industrial working-class part of Manchester. It is a book about searching for love, an identity, a place to call home, and the need for a real mother. It is essentially a book about Winterson’s pursuit of happiness, an emotion that her adoptive mother did not believe in. Jeanette Winterson has written an autobiography of such exquisite honesty that it rates as the best autobiography I have read in many years.
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