NOVELS
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
The Passion
Sexing the Cherry
Written on the Body
Art & Lies
Gut Symmetries
The PowerBook
Lighthousekeeping
The Stone Gods
The Gap of Time
SHORT STORIES
The World and Other Places
Midsummer Nights (ed.)
Christmas Days
NOVELLAS
Weight (Myth)
The Daylight Gate
(Horror)
NON-FICTION
Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere
COLLABORATIONS
Land (with Antony Gormley and Clare Richardson)
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Tanglewreck
The Lion, the Unicorn and Me
The King of Capri
The Battle of the Sun
COMIC BOOKS
Boating for Beginners
JEANETTE WINTERSON
FRAN KISS STEIN
A LOVE STORY
Copyright 2019 by Jeanette Winterson
Cover design by Suzanne Dean
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
The lines ‘We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again’ and ‘Looking for a lover who won’t blow my cover’ are from the song ‘Take It Easy’, lyrics by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey. The line ‘There’s a pretty little thing waiting for the king’ is from the song ‘Walking in Memphis’, lyrics by Marc Cohn.
First published in 2019 by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage UK
Printed in Canada
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: October 2019
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-0-8021-2949-9
eISBN 978-0-8021-2950-5
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
NewYork, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
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We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again.
Eagles, ‘Take It Easy’
Table of Contents
By the Same Author
Begin to Read
A Note from the Author
Acknowledgments
Reality is water-soluble.
What we could see, the rocks, the shore, the trees, the boats on the lake, had lost their usual definition and blurred into the long grey of a week’s rain. Even the house, that we fancied was made of stone, wavered inside a heavy mist and through that mist, sometimes, a door or a window appeared like an image in a dream.
Every solid thing had dissolved into its watery equivalent.
Our clothes did not dry. When we came in, and we must come in, because we must go out, we brought the weather with us. Waterlogged leather. Wool that stank of sheep.
There is mould on my underclothes.
This morning I had the idea to walk naked. What is the use of sodden cloth? Of covered buttons so swollen in their buttonholes that I had to be cut out of my dress yesterday?
This morning my bed was as wet as if I had sweated all night. The windows were misty with my own breath. Where the fire burned in the grate the wood hissed like a dejection of nature. I left you sleeping and I trod silently down the filmy stairs, my feet wet.
Naked.
I opened the main door to the house. The rain continued, steady and indifferent. For seven days now it had fallen, not faster, not slower, not increasing, not abating. The earth could swallow no more and the ground everywhere was spongy – the gravel paths oozed water, and several springs had burst through the orderly garden, eroding soil that deposited itself in thick black puddles at our gate.
But this morning it was behind the house I went, higher up the slope, hoping for a break in the clouds, where I might see the lake that lay below us.
As I climbed, I reflected on what it must have been for our ancestors, without fire, often without shelter, wandering in nature, so beautiful and bountiful, but so pitiless in her effects. I reflected that without language, or before language, the mind cannot comfort itself.
And