As an added bonus, there are recipes included in between each chapter. I enjoyed the commentary and history that went along with them. There's very few I'd actually make, but they were fun to read. Sunem oameni, nu mașini. Avem și noi zile proaste. Avem probleme mintale. Suntem inspirați, și totuși dăm greș. Nu suntem unidimensionali. Avem inimi ce se frâng și suflete cu care nu știm ce să facem. Ucidem și distrugem, dar și construim și facem lucrurile posibile.” Lyrical, filled with fantasy and warmth, I feel Jeanette Winterson is the ideal writer for Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days. She intertwines the short stories with recipes and reflections of herself on Christmases past. I found the pieces on Ruth Rendell, the famous thriller writer, and reflections on the deceased adoptive mother of Winterson which we know from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, especially moving. I also enjoyed today's essay, a turkey recipe from Kamila Shamsie (I LOVED Home Fire), and a fun story about a turkey that would imitate human speech. Until he met a tragic turkey end, something kept from Winterson until they were an adult.

Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by

Jeanette Winterson: 'The male push is to discard the planet: all the boys are going off into space' ". The Guardian. 25 July 2021. Archived from the original on 31 August 2021 . Retrieved 3 September 2021. To counteract this tendency, each story is followed by a recipe embedded in a down-to-earth and often funny memoiristic piece. Some of these are sadder than others, but generally they were a relief after the intense emotionality of the 'fiction' stories. Would it be too much to read Winterson’s Christmas collection as an attempt, finally, to make peace and come to terms with her past? The evidence is there in the inclusion of the recipe for her father’s favourite trifle, which she made out of tinned fruit and Bristol Cream sherry only a few days before he died. “I am glad of that last Christmas with my dad,” she writes, “not because it rewrote the past but because it rewrote our ending. The story, for all its pain and sometimes horror, did not end tragically; it ended with forgiveness.”Audrey Bilger (Winter 1997). "Jeanette Winterson, The Art of Fiction No. 150". The Paris Review. Winter 1997 (145). An extended autobiographical article in The Guardian, Friday 28 October 2011: Retrieved 1 November 2011.

CHRISTMAS DAYS | Kirkus Reviews CHRISTMAS DAYS | Kirkus Reviews

Winner, Lesbian Memoir or Biography category, Lambda Literary Awardsm for Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? [25]Gadher, Dipesh (26 October 2008). "Lesbian novelist Jeanette Winterson planned last visit to dying ex-lover". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016 . Retrieved 17 March 2011. In between each story is a recipe and I also loved the stories that went with them. Here Winterson lets the reader into her life, her hardships, her wife, Suzy Ormond and trying to keep her traditions, Winterson loves Christmas, with a Jew who does not celebrate Christmas. Her times at Shakespeare and Company, some tidbits of her family life growing up and her wonderful friendship with the late Ruth Rendell. Personal and interesting stuff here, one gets a sense of who this author is and what she considers important. A very unusual Christmas book. Winterson loves Christmas for its reflection, ritual, love and community . The recipes in the book are less about putting on a holiday show and more about how food can help make Christmas (and life) merrier and brighter. The stories are all designed to raise the ghost of an idea, like modern Christmas Carols, most featuring ghosts and/or magical creatures. All throughout, there's a bit of history, some autobiography, and this wish: "...light a candle for the future; that it may happen and not be swallowed up by darkness." Marty and recently deceased David, oh gosh, what a sweet story we are offered of carrying loss with you. Why do we fall in love with someone because the glory that they are, and immediately try to change them? and Only the impossible is worth the effort. were quotes that I really found touching.

Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson | Waterstones

I am a bit of a misery when it comes to Christmas and find myself getting fed up and rather resentful of all the fuss but reading this today has made me feel, yes, happy. the loneliness that so many people experience now at Christmas is a consequence of our loss of community..."From the New York Times bestselling author of "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" comes an enchanting collection of stories for the holiday season. Winterson takes the theology of Christmas seriously even if she isn’t your typical Christian, and she adds in a lot of interesting historical footnotes about the pagan origins of our holiday traditions. In between the stories are recipes – personal favorites, or hand-me-downs from family and friends – for everything from mince pies to turkey curry. The preambles to these are an opportunity for some autobiographical reflections on her parents’ death and being married to a Jew. I love her thoughts on ritual and family: Christmas at an orphanage that is not as pleasant as benefactors believe. Echoes of Dahl, again, making humour from the grim. A story of childlike faith in magic, and hope for better things, coupled with practical action. There’s a bit of playing with gender expectations (male and female snowpeople, and human children whose names leave you unsure at first) and puns on “snow” that soften the deprivation of one of the main characters. Everybody loves a Christmas story. The tradition of the Twelve Days of Christmas is a tradition of celebration, sharing and giving. And what better way to do that than with a story?

Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days

Ritual is a way of altering time. By which I mean a way of pausing the endless intrusion of busy life. The essay is a nice discussion on reversals and how that figures in fairy tales and the nativity story. Reversals disrupt and make anew, she says. ‘ [W]e could do with more stability in our outward-facing lives so that we could risk disruption to our inner lives; our thinking, feeling, imaginative lives,’ Winterson writes, which I feel is a good response to how instead of a world on competition and consumerism valued stability, creativity and the human spirit.

Find a Book

Silver Frog had a delicious Tim Burton kind of feel to it, being very over the top and sad at the same time. A bit Roald Dahl The Witches like. There's a haunted house and a SnowMama. There are Yuletides and holly wreaths. Three Kings. And a merry little Christmas time. Devilishly scintillating and quite touching… buy and adore this astute, wildly inventive and totally unique book.”— Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle Yes, the book we have all been waiting for. Yes, everything Winterson has always done so well. Yes, above and beyond anything that is yet to be written.”— Daisy Johnson