The Passion

by Jeanette Winterson

Paperback, 1997

Status

Checked out

Publication

Grove Press (1997), Edition: 0, Paperback, 176 pages

Description

Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, "The Passion" intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice's compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny. In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects.

Media reviews

We know from her first two novels that Jeanette Winterson is not lacking in a sense of humor and a sense of the absurd, but these qualities are greatly attenuated in The Passion, and one must hope that she does not renounce them altogether in pursuit of romantic high seriousness. In other respects
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The Passion represents a remarkable advance in boldness and invention, compared to her previous novels,
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User reviews

LibraryThing member crimson-tide
What to say about this book . . . it is one of the very few to which I haven given 5 stars. Needless to say, I absolutely loved it.

The Passion is an amazingly imaginitive, truly magical, and very thought provoking book. Winterson's writing is fluid, lyrical and sensuous, and the whole story is
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crafted quite brilliantly. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it has Napoleon as a minor character only. The two major characters are Henri, one of Napoleon's soldiers and his chicken chef, and Villanelle, the daughter of a Venetian boatman. It begins in France, moves to Venice, then Russia in the heart of winter, and back to Venice. The descriptions of Venice "a living city" are extraordinarily vivid; you can feel yourself gliding down the dark icy canals and tunnels into the hidden interior of the city.

It is a book about passion, as the title says. About passion for an ideal, and transferred to an idealised leader. About passion in a sensual as well as a sexual sense, and also in a romantic sense. About the price one may be required to pay for feeling that passion. It is also about love, loving and being in love and "giving your heart away". About what we value and what we are prepared to risk.

The quality of this book, and of Winterson's writing is astounding. Having said all that, you will still have no idea what it is actually about and what she is saying until you have read it.

Just read it.
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LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
I picked this up because I'd read Winterson's 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit' years ago, and really liked it. But, while that was an autobiographically-inclined novel, this was quite different. A historical novel, it tells the story of a young French man who becomes Napoleon's cook, and a wild
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Venetian girl with a penchant for cross-dressing. These two unlikely characters' lives eventually intertwine, with hefty doses of the surreal and magical realism. Winterson is an extremely talented writer, but I found the experience to be a bit uneven at times - perhaps just because I liked the parts featuring Villanelle (the girl) much more than those with Henri. The book is vividly and poetically written; it is also philosophical and sad.
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LibraryThing member jscape2000
Really lovely, just a touch of magical realism. A lot of space devoted to gender identity and its obscuration. Reminds me of Jean Rhys (who is one of my top ten authors). Everything that seems like a lie is likely real, but much of what seems genuine is deception or self-deception.

I had read and
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liked Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit years ago, but hadn't read anything else of hers till I picked this up in the library book sale. Just looked her up- I hadn't realized she'd been so prolific.
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LibraryThing member JenLynnKnox
Magical realism set in wartime, told with a delicate lacing of philosophy, religion and perfectly-flawed romance. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
LibraryThing member Kristelh
The story is set in the time of Napoleon and features Henri, a young man who loves Napoleon and cooks for him and a young woman Villanelle, from Venice who loses her heart to another woman. Henri and Villanelle meet up in the snows of Russia. It is a story of passion. Passions of Napoleon, passions
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of Villanelle and passions of Henri. The writing is beautiful written and of a style, magical realism.

First words: It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress; some still cold and slung over hooks, some turning slowly on the spit, but most in wasted piles because the Emperor was busy.

Quotes: “I'm telling you stories. Trust me.”

“I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligations but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.”

"the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else."

Last words: I'm telling you stories. Trust me.
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LibraryThing member kant1066
Several years ago, I read Jeanette Winterson's “Written On The Body,” which made a tremendous impression on me, and unfortunately I haven't found my way to another Winterson novel until now. What struck me most about her writing then and still what attracts me the most is her command of an
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innovative, unique style that reminds me of a melange of the best of Robertson Davies, Angela Carter, and Borges. It has a fantastical quality all its own that seems quite separate from magical realism, and in my opinion is much more engaging.

The novel comes in a tiny package, but there's plenty to think about. One of the leitmotifs is the idea of passion in all its forms – war, human love, gambling, the epicurean passions of the sybarite. The character of Villanelle, the daughter of a Venetian boatman who at night masquerades as a man in the Felliniesque casinos of her city, allows the novel just as openly to play with themes of identity and gender – a continuing them in Winterson's fiction.

Henri is a professional soldier in Napoleon's army, fatefully chosen to be the tender of the Emperor's larders as he makes the monomaniacal decision to invade Russia – in the winter, which the characters call “a zero winter.” Villanelle is a fascinating character: married to a vile man, she ends up getting sold into Napoleon's army as a prostitute for community use. Villanelle and Henry meet as Napoleon's army is finally collapsing under its own weight, and Henri has made the decision to desert, along with Patrick, an eccentric priest with a history all his own. During their journey back to Italy, Henri and Villanelle fall in love.

After they finally make it back home, he rescues her beating heart from a Venetian palace, places it back into her body, goes stark raving mad (like Emperor, like soldier), and is committed to a prison where he is forced to see his beloved row by in her gondola every single day. Just like the end of every other love story you've ever read, right?

Villanelle is also a body of paradoxes – a whore and a savior, a man and a woman, a warrior and a lover. Winterson uses religious imagery to highlight her, and successfully manages to make her dialogue with the character of Henri almost kerygmatic. (The passion of the gospels is possibly still another that Winterson is trying to unearth as the story develops.)

While I may very well go back to my old ways and not read her again for another several years, Jeanette Winterson's fiction deserves some serious attention. You can always expect her to be concerned with the mercurial nature of human love (and especially lesbian love), but beyond that, you will never know the set of tropes she will use to explore it – fantastic historical fiction here, physics in “Gut Symmetries,” a post-apocalyptic hellscape in “The Stone Gods,” or memoir in “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?” But I hope I’ve learned my lesson and don’t neglect her again for nearly as long.
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LibraryThing member Laurenbdavis
This novel is told from the point of views of two characters -- a young man, Henri, an army cook for a chicken-obsessed Napoleon, and Villanelle, a Venetian web-footed female cross-dresser. Henri falls in a kind of hero-worshiping love with Napoleon but after the invastion of Russia becomes utterly
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disillusioned. Villanelle falls in love with a mysterious woman who, literally, takes her heart and keeps it hidden in a Venetian house. Later she marries a senior cook who is Henri's archenemy and something of a grotesque, but she later leaves him. Alas, he chases her and when he finds her, sells her off as a prostitute to the French officers. Thus, Henri and Villanelle's stories collide when she meets Henri in Russia, where Henri is trying to survive with an ex-priest. Henri becomes enamored of Villanelle and follows her to Venice, where she hopes to reclaim her heart. Sadly, Villanelle's husband also follows them and things don't work out very well for pour Henri, who looses more than his mind.

With THE PASSIONWinterson moves firmly away from the traditional novel form -- she mixes history and myth and fairy tales. The recurring line, "Trust me, I'm telling you stories" becomes Winterson's refrain and leitmotif, not only in this work, but in her the rest of her fiction as well. Indeed, one could say it is the major theme of her work, along with the sexual ambiguity of her characters. All Winterson's work, and this is no exception, are loaded with scriptural references and biblical allusions (which is no surprise to those of us who have read an admired her semi-autobiographical novel, ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT. She also mines the liminal space between passion and obsession, as well as "truth" and "fiction" and sexual identify..

A firm post-modernist, Winterson uses authorial interruptions throughout the novel to directly address the reader, and it is this authorial voice that provides two fairy tales that comment on the main story. I must admit, most post-modernists leave me cold, so chilly is the detachment of their prose and perspective (and often so over-clever), but Winterson's desperation to make you understand reminds me, in an odd way, of James Agee's LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN. She wants so much to make you understand, and she has so much compassion for her broken, emotionally-battered characters, that I can't help but be swept up in their stories. The fact she's such a brilliant wordsmith doesn't hurt.
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LibraryThing member Ladydncing
Set during the Napoleonic Wars, two interesting, yet unforgettable characters (Henri, a simple French soldier and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman) meet and start a very unusual intimate relationship. I am a fan of Magical Realism, however didn't find this book
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satisfying... left me wanting more!
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LibraryThing member ignorantleafy
I thought this book was astonishing. I went in, never having read Winterson before, totally disbelieving the title. And yet, it is a work of passion... not embarrassment, not disavowal, but the kind of passion whose thighs you could bite. It's written with obvious relish. I enjoyed the hell out of
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this book.
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LibraryThing member wordwench
My favourite book of all time. I have never read a book as good as this, before or since. Love it!
LibraryThing member BrianDewey
Winterson, Jeanette. The Passion. Grove Press, New York, 1987. First read this book in 1996 while visiting grad schools---I remember finishing the book when I was in Ithaca looking at Cornell. I decided to re-read the book because it mezmerised me so much the first time. I still love Winterson when
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her writing is at its most mythic and imaginiative, and I think she is in peak form in this book. At its heart, this is a love story of the most unusal kind. Henri, a deserter from Napoleon's army, falls in love with Villanelle. It's an odd, magical love that eventually drives him insane. The story has it all: war, sex, madness, and a beautiful writing style that seems inspired by music with its repeated phrases.
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LibraryThing member wendyrey
Set in the time of the Napoleon the interlocking stories of a young French soldier and Venetian boatman's. Love and passion, murder and betrayal . Well written magical realism.
LibraryThing member Cariola
Well, I guess I am not a fan of magical realism! I had heard raves about Winterson's work, so I picked up this novel to give her a try. While I enjoyed it and agree that it was well written, there was nothing here that left much of an impression on me, aside from the coldness and ugliness of war. I
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agree with the reviewer who seemed to feel that the merger of Henri's and Villanelle's stories didn't quite work, and that the author seemed much more interested in the latter.
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LibraryThing member ffortsa
This novel of history and fantasy weaves together the Napoleonic wars and the mysteries of Venice, punctuated by the stories the characters tell about themselves and others. Quite enchanting.
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
I've been a fan of Jeanette Winterson ever since I read her debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and I liked the second novel of hers I read (Written on the Body) nearly as much. Though I own a couple more (and my wife has still more than that), this is only the third one that I've read. I
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liked it okay. The tale of a French soldier loving a Venetian boatman's daughter is decent, but perhaps never as moving as it ought to be. It's been about three months since I finished it, and already most of it has faded from memory, which is a marked contrast with her other two novels.
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LibraryThing member iliadawry
Better, and harder, the second time.
LibraryThing member terena
Her best work. Set in Venice in the 17th century. A love story and fantasy.
LibraryThing member Gwendydd
I devoured this book in just a few days because it was so engaging, but I wish I had read it slower and taken the time to savor it and think about it - there is a lot of food for thought here. Winterson's writing style is very plain, not one unnecessary or out-of-place word, yet very powerful and
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vivid. The descriptions of Venice, in particular, are amazingly evocative.

The book tells the story of a soldier in Napoleon's army and a woman who works in a Venetian casino. Both characters' stories explore how passion shapes their lives: passion for Napoleon, passion for life, passion for home, family, a woman. It also explores how they cope when their passion fails them, or when they can't have their passion.

I need to reread this and take the time to savor and ponder it.
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LibraryThing member bexaplex
The Passion is very cream puffy - the lines are beautiful, but the plot and character development are not very satisfying. The structure of the story - first Henri's backstory, then Villanelle's, their meeting, and finally the consequences of their meeting - imply a romeo and juliet-like tragedy.
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Since the tragedy is Henri's, Villanelle almost seems like a side character given too much screen time because the author thought her much more interesting that the main story. She gets her heart back, she drives Henri crazy and seems to go on her merry way with a great big house in her home town. What was the price she paid for passion?
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LibraryThing member KelAppNic
This is my favorite Winterson book, and one of my favorite books of all time. She has amazingly found new ways and words with which to describe romantic love, a dubious task at best! Plus the imagery is astounding as always, and the prose is both poetic and concrete.
LibraryThing member woctune
Beautiful book. Her best, I think.
LibraryThing member Rdra1962
I have strange feelings about this book. The story itself was just okay for me, but I liked the historical details and marveled over the descriptions. What brought this up to a four star rating for me was the writing, the insights. I read this book as a used copy and my copy was heavily underlined.
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I have never underlined a work of fiction, although I have occasionally been tempted, but this book was crazy. Not only did I "get" why the previous reader underlined so many sentences, I found many more I wanted to underline myself. This author is a veritable "Book Of Quotations"! She just scatters beautiful insights left and right; about love, loss, life, parenthood, friendship, war, heroes, death, the weather, whatever. I almost found it distracting as it I kept pausing to reread stunning phrases, and it kept taking me out of the story. A short book, well worth reading.
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LibraryThing member ssperson
Odd and interesting and magical
LibraryThing member AliceWonders
This is one of the best books I ever read. History with a touch of magic, a love story, a bit of philosophy, and beautifully written.
LibraryThing member spiritedstardust
For me, I felt the writing was trying to be quotable and thus felt a touch try-hard - the writing also made me feel quite removed from the characters and thus I felt detached from the story overall.
The first third of the book with Henri was tough to get through - I didnt care for it.
Villanelle had
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great promise for a character - but the way this story was set up and the writing just didn't do her justice.
There were so many heavy themes in the book but it just felt glossed over.
The "passion" also wasnt there for me. The closest it came was the married woman Villanelle had an affair with - but once againt there wasn't really any set up or substance.
and then the ending??? like wtf henri?
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Original publication date

1987

Physical description

176 p.; 5.75 x 0.5 inches

ISBN

0802135226 / 9780802135223
Page: 0.8845 seconds