Oranges are not the only Fruit -- Book Review

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

By Jeanette Winterson

Atlantic Monthly Press:  New York    1985

This is a well written coming of age story about a young English girl growing up under difficult circumstances.  The difficult circumstances are her mother’s total absorption in a very conservative version of evangelical Christianity.  Although the story takes place in England, the characters are English, and much of the culture and mentality presented is English, I believe many American readers will be able to relate to the book, particularly if they come from a conservative religious background. 

The book clearly illustrates the inadequacy of the Christian religion for dealing with the major problems of life and the devastating impact it can have on human relations and on the families of those who take it seriously.   The girl grows up as a child immersed in the church, the Bible, and its teachings.  She is completely dominated by her mother.  Her father is pretty much absent and is not really a player in the drama of her development.   When she is about fourteen she has a sexual affair with a girlfriend her own age.  It is quite passionate and she is in love.  She made the mistake of attempting to open up to her mother about it and the reaction of the entire community was terrible.  The girls are forced to “repent” and end the relationship.  Jeanette’s repentance is only superficial and she wants to continue the relationship, but Melanie, the girlfriend, repudiates the relationship as wrong and rejects her.  Jeanette goes on to form other female sexual relationships eventually breaking with her mother and the church she grew up in.  Melanie marries and is last seen pushing a stroller.

There are a number of interesting issues raised by this book.  The utter inadequacy of the Christian faith in dealing with sex is painfully clear.  This is a failing that is played out in myriad variations in millions of homes around the world and will certainly resonate with many people.  It is not only homosexuality that the Christian faith cannot accommodate, it is sex in general.  Christianity is a sex negative religion and this book is a small illustration of the immense destruction that this causes in the lives of people who fall victim to it.  This inconsequential affair between two very young girls brings this whole community into an uproar.  The perverse, prosecutorial overreaction is symptomatic of a pervasive emotional malaise that is firmly rooted in their Christian religious beliefs. 

She brings up another interesting topic in her section entitled Deuteronomy.  This is a short section in the latter half of the book where she discusses her philosophical position on storytelling, history, and the past.  “Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.  Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved.  I don’t believe them.  The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots.”  I take exception to this.  Some things have to be true.  Everything cannot be an interpretation and thus subject to variability.  For example if an airplane crashes on such and such a day and 200 people are killed, there can be no doubt or flexibility about the truth of that event.  The farther away from that event that we march in time, the harder it may be for us to ascertain its occurrence, but that there was or was not such an event cannot be disputed.  In principle there is a truth of the matter.  There are such things as facts.  But the past can obscure them and make them difficult to determine.  Every good lawyer knows this.  So while the point she makes about the manifold possibilities for interpretation and perspective that any story or event offers is well taken, she goes too far in denying that there is any such thing as “truth.”  The world is not entirely arbitrary, which is what it would be if “truth” could be anything we wanted it to be.  There is a place for what we call “history” and the narratives of history do make “progress.”  The asteroid that struck the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is admittedly an interpretation, a construction built from a myriad of observations and theoretical reasonings.  But there is an underlying truth to the matter.  There either was such an asteroid and such a collision or there wasn’t.  And it is possible through the use of reason and observation to arrive at an assessment of its probability or improbability.  That is what history and science do.  We measure our “progress” in these endeavors by our ability to make accurate predictions and to solve problems.  The scourge of smallpox has been eliminated from the world because we have been able to ascertain the “truth” of its genesis and prevention.  One can find many other such examples.  Winterson’s skepticism of history and science is unwarranted and naïve, but she has put her finger on the profound ambiguities of human relations and the necessity to exercise caution in making assumptions and drawing conclusions about the experiences and relationships of other people.  This is a caution that American readers would do well to heed. 

It’s a nice little book.  Not too long, but interesting, well written and exploring numerous issues relevant to the lives of many contemporary people.