Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
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Book Overview
A New York Times bestseller: The "magnificent" memoir by one of the bravest and most original writers of our time--"A tour de force of literature and love" (Vogue).
One of the New York Times' "50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years"
Jeanette Winterson's bold and revelatory novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. Her internationally best-selling debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, and has become a staple of required reading in contemporary fiction classes.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a "singular and electric" memoir about a life's work to find happiness (The New York Times). It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the universe as a cosmic dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past, rose to haunt the author later in life, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also a book about the power of literature, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, or a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.
Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded story of the search for belonging--for love, identity, home, and a mother.
Customer Reviews
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Mentions in Our Blog
As we countdown to 2020, we're publishing a series of ten of the best books of the past decade in ten different genres. 10 x 10! In order to finish by the end of 2019, we'll be packaging two genres together in this once-a-week series. This week's lists are Realistic Fiction and Memoir. Here are our picks for the ten best in each.
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