Winterson is careful to give few physical descriptions outside of what’s absolutely necessary to make us love these characters. The tricolor.”īoth Henri and Villanelle are enticing characters even though all we know about them are their observations of the world around them. We’re white with red noses and blue fingers. I take off my socks once a week to cut my toenails and the others call me a dandy. Even in the kitchen, the warmest place on any camp, the heat is too thin to spread and the copper pans cloud over. I don’t remember the feeling of a fire against my knees. “There was no heat, only degrees of cold. Just when we think we’re hearing the gospel truth, the paragraph ends with “trust me, I’m telling you stories.” She pairs this trust me/don’t trust me sentiment with historical settings and context that is at once brutally simple and enchantingly beautiful:

“Trust me, I’m telling you stories,” is a much repeated phrase throughout this novel, and Winterson wields it like a weapon. I can’t talk about the plot too much without absolutely ruining the wonderful surprises and moments this book offers, so instead we’re going to talk about Winterson’s amazing use of prose.

The Passion follows Henri, a soldier in Napoleon’s army, and Villanelle, a remarkable woman from Venice as they weave a story back and forth that we aren’t sure whether we’re to believe at face-value, or take as metaphor. Now, it wasn’t Gaiman levels of destruction, but it still did a number. Why have I never heard of Jeanette Winterson before? And why has it taken me so long to find her? This little unassuming book totally took me by the heartstrings and destroyed me.

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson