![]() Villanelle works in a gambling casino dressed as a boy, which enables her to meet a wide variety of characters. Villanelle is web-footed, can walk on water, and knows her way around the secret places of Venice like the back of her hand. ![]() ![]() Next, we meet Villanelle, the cross-dressing daughter of a boatsman. Henri struggles between hero-worship of Napoleon and the horrors of war. Henri becomes a neck-wringer, one of the several men tasked with keeping The Emperor well supplied with the chicken dishes he insists upon several times per day. We begin with our hero Henri, a young Frenchman sent to fight. As is usual for Winterson’s stories, the everyday, verifiable ordinary clashes with the magical and surreal. ![]() The setting in this case is France, Russia, and Venice during the Napoleonic Wars. It seems that she simply chooses a setting and time period, and then weaves the tale she wants to tell into that setting. The settings of her novels, while interesting, rarely seem to matter. It is nearly a misnomer to classify Jeanette Winterson’s novels as historical fiction. #214 on “1,001 Books to Read Before You Die” ![]() Genre: Fiction (Historical), Magical Realism Winner: John Llewwllyn Rhys Prize for Fiction, 1987 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |