Written on the Body

Like Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which had a hugely successful TV adaptation, Jeanette Winterson's new book, Written on the Body, has its telegenic moments. The narrator's brief romances with a zookeeper and a Dutch anarcho-feminist who plants bombs in public toilets are straight out of Monty Python. But when he/she (the gender is never revealed) falls deeply in love with a fragile redhead, farce gives way to a deadly serious display of literary talent. Winterson broods entertainingly about passion, loyalty, beauty, disease, and decay in a language that draws on Donne, Shakespeare, snippets from anatomy texts, and her own unabashed sexiness. A tour de force, with bravado and heart. A