**A Journey Through Childhood Trauma: Jeanette Winterson's Autobiographical Works**

I read this at the beginning of the read-a-thon and this was my last book because I wanted to separate them to let them sit, so it's interesting to note that I started with the fictionalized account of Jeanette Winterson's childhood, "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit", written when she was 25. This novel is a semi-autobiographical account of her upbringing with an abusive mother who was a Pentecostal and struggled with mental health issues. The mother would often tell Jeannette that she must have picked the wrong crib as a punishment, which was indeed appalling but also made me think deeply about her experiences.

Writing "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" was a way for Jeanette to process her childhood trauma, but I felt like there was more she wasn't telling us. The writing style is beautiful and poignant, but it's clear that she held back in some ways to soften the blow of her experiences. What struck me most about "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" is how harshly her mother treated her, and yet Jeannette herself seems to have turned this experience into a source of strength. The novel does make you think, but it's also difficult to reconcile the trauma she endured with her own resilience.

Fast-forwarding 30 years or so, Jeanette Winterson returns to her childhood in "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?", a book that is quite different from its predecessor. This one is written in a much more mature and introspective style, as if Jeannette has finally come to terms with her experiences. The novel jumps forward in time, exploring Jeannette's life at Oxford and her complicated relationship with her birth mother. I was struck by how open she is about her childhood trauma, describing it as an "open wound that will never heal" – a wound that she feels she'll always have to live with.

One of the things that impresses me most about Jeanette Winterson's writing style in this book is its lyricism and depth. She tackles themes of working-class life, identity, and the struggles of growing up with mental health issues, all with remarkable nuance. I felt like I was reading about American versions of people from my own background, which was a truly powerful experience. "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" is not just a memoir; it's also a masterful exploration of how trauma shapes us and what we can do to heal.

In terms of her writing style, Jeanette Winterson has clearly developed significantly since the earlier book. The plot of this novel is deceptively simple, but she packs in layers of storytelling, fairy tales, and folklore that are simply mesmerizing. I found myself completely absorbed in the world she created, and by the time I finished, I felt a sense of satisfaction and completion – as if I'd been sitting on the couch finishing a book for hours, not just last night.

Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical works are both beautiful and challenging to read. While "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" is an important first step in understanding her experiences, it's really "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" that showcases her growth as a writer and her ability to confront difficult themes head-on. Both books are essential reads for anyone interested in Jeanette Winterson or simply great literature.

In terms of her literary output, both "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" and "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" were published by Grove Press in the US, a publisher that seems to be dedicated to showcasing innovative and important works. If you're looking for books to add to your reading list, I highly recommend these two novels, which are both beautifully written and thought-provoking.

As I wrap up this article, I'd love to hear from readers about their own experiences with the autumn read-a-thon or other book-related activities. Have you tackled any challenging reads recently? What did you think of Halloween decorations and celebrations in your area? Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments below, and thank you for reading!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm good drew Winchester welcome back to my channel and today I'm going to be doing my wrap-up for the autumn read-a-thon I did five of the six prompts now that being said I will say that I was planning on vlogging it but about halfway through I got a very horrible migraine and I basically lost two days of doing stuff I did finish stranger things like in almost one sitting so that was a plus positive silver lining however I did lose those two days so what I did for myself because I was really disappointed was I went myself finished the books I had started and and have until the end of the month to do that just to make it I don't know fair for myself because you know readathons are for you and so I that's just what I decided to do so executive position so I'm going to tell you about solar books that I read for the read-a-thon I finished all the prompts except the historical fiction one so first up is one of the bonus prompts and that is a short story collection her body and other parties by Carmen Maria Machado and the set from grey wolf and this is a short story my baby this is a restored collection and it is about a woman's body and how men use the woman's body and I really enjoyed this short story collection there's the first stories about a woman who has a green ribbon tied around her neck and she tells her husband you cannot touch this this is mine this is something that is mine and it's just like a metaphor for how men want to own every part of women and that kind of thing so I would really enjoy that there's a lot of similar stories there's one about two women who create a baby they have a baby and then there are other stories there's about women's body there's a lot of trigger warnings in this book that I thought thought it was very well done but sometimes I felt like a particular couple of stories that they were kind of she used sensationalism a bit too much and they were just you know kind of sounded similar to the other story so so it's not perfect for me but I really did enjoy this book and would highly recommend it and one of my favorite stories was one that she told using like every episode of Law & Order SVU and I cannot describe it like at first I thought she was just doing these quirky captions for each episode title but she's actually telling a different story in the episode titles and using the characters everything I want to know like how like how she decided to do that I thought it was very clever and very well done so that is her body and other parties my spooky or creepy or gothic book or whatever it was his mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones and this is all from William Morrow I really loved this book I thought it was fantastic normally I don't like episodic type stories or novels but I thought this was great so it starts out with this kid who's comes from a family of werewolves and this incident happens and they have to leave their home and he travels with the Zayn and uncle across the United States and it alternates between this continuous narrative from that point forward and then these random flashbacks - and he was really little and first learning about werewolves so you get these episodes that move the narrative forward and also these flashback kind of episodes and each one contains almost their own little story of stuff that happens and there's an overarching narratives and different things it's just really well done I've never read Stephen Graham Jones before but I really enjoyed this book there it is kind of gruesome so there is like some stuff in it just to be aware oh I didn't think it was too much I didn't think it was good - it is I thought it was great especially I mean it's a horror book who were Eskimo I just really enjoyed it I thought it was a lot of fun and it was I mean you know her body and how the parties was really intense and kind of soul sucking not in like a bad way but like a really intense kind of way because there's so much in it and this one was just fun and I felt like it was a nice palate cleanser is it was really good and I'll definitely be reading Stephen Graham Dern's again the book that I read set in a cold location is a man called Bouvet and this is by Frederic Bachman and I used this as a palate cleanser from some of the one of the books I'm going to talk about here in a second but this is um out from atria books and this is just a delightful read guys like it's so much fun it's basically like the old man from up it's that story only set in Sweden in a more realistic type way and I absolutely adore this book it's a lot of fun a narrator is just perfect and it is yeah I love the movie and I just love the book as well so it's like this marginally old man who everything needs to be in its place and then your two voice I have to say is just perfect so if you want something that is light-hearted but still has a little bit of you know substance to it I friend described it as old man fluff I think it was worth just fluff but I was definitely one of those heartwarming kind of reads not quite harm our channel but I really I really enjoyed this book like yeah I'm rereading more of Fred Bachmann stuff I'm the last two books or I would say it will probably be my favorite of the read-a-thon and I want to talk about them together because I feel like they go together and that is endures are not the only fruit and I be happy when you could be normal both by Jeanette Winterson I read this the beginning of the read-a-thon and this was my last book because I wanted to separate them to let them sit so in oranges are not the only fruit is the fictionalized account that Jeanette wrote when she was 25 about her childhood and how she grew up with a mother very abusive mom basically uh who was a Pentecostal and her mom had really struggled with a lot of mental health problems and just just a lot of problems she was not a good person and she really Jeanette's adopted so she would tell her that she must have picked the wrong crib as like a punishment and I was just like what it was pretty appalling but it did make you think and made me think a lot and she wrote this as I said when she was 25 and while reading it I was very moved by if I felt like I could tell it was her first novel and I felt like I would try anything how to describe it and I feel like it's she was holding back and she was softening the blow of her childhood so I felt like it wasn't quite the best that she could do and you know I really enjoyed it but it was like well I'm not exactly blown away by it because I feel like there's more there that she's not telling us and that was true actually and that's I feel part of the reason why she wrote why be happy when you could be normal and and this she holds nothing back her writing style is absolutely impeccable and it's not linear like our news are not the only fruit and she talks about the differences that she did soften up oranges that she brought a character into that would comfort the protagonist when you know Dan herself didn't really have that comfort and it was much more difficult than she just in the book but she was trying to make sense of it but this is a much more mature Jeanette she wrote this when she was this came out in 2011 while oranges came out in 1985 so there was like what like 30 years or something about almost 30 years between the two books and yeah I and then this one she moves forward like to her time at Oxford and eventually me like her birth mother and the different things that she went through yeah this one just knocked my socks off I I don't really know how to describe it any other way is definitely a 5-star read for me and I felt like there was just so much meaning that Jeanette talked about and how you know her childhood really changed her life and her art having to come to terms with you know her mom and just she describes it as like an open wound that will never heal and that she just has to care for and deal with and that she doesn't think we're really ever heal but she's just trying to work with what she has and I thought that was very beautiful and I thought that you know her talking about working-class people it's absolutely fantastic I felt like I had met American versions of these people from where I grew up and I just thought it was everything it was everything that I had hoped it would be and that's why I think they definitely go together this is where like you know the younger Jeannette writing about her life trying to come to terms but not wanting to admit how horrible it was and I think that this is definitely Jeannette and more mature Jeanette Winterson coming to terms with everything and it's just they go together and so I would have the I recommend that you definitely read oranges first I think that's pretty much a requirement and then this one is the second part so they definitely go together and they're both pretty short oranges about 200 pages and this is 225 so it's not that you know it's not what really but she packed a ton in here it's just amazing he's so storytelling and fairy tales and folklore like Oh like when I finished I was just like that's me sitting on the couch finishing the book how much finished it last night but I was like it's funny a maestra plot I could have picked so yeah and both of those are out from Grove in the US just in case you're wondering but those are definitely ones I'm gonna be putting on my chip I list because they are just absolutely beautiful so that is all of the books that I read for the autumn read-a-thon I hope you enjoyed that please let me know if you ran these books how did your automate a thon turnout if you did a vlog please let me know I want to watch them you can link in the down below and be forever grateful but otherwise just tell me what you read waiting read recently how was your Halloween etc and I guess I will talk to you later guys byehi I'm good drew Winchester welcome back to my channel and today I'm going to be doing my wrap-up for the autumn read-a-thon I did five of the six prompts now that being said I will say that I was planning on vlogging it but about halfway through I got a very horrible migraine and I basically lost two days of doing stuff I did finish stranger things like in almost one sitting so that was a plus positive silver lining however I did lose those two days so what I did for myself because I was really disappointed was I went myself finished the books I had started and and have until the end of the month to do that just to make it I don't know fair for myself because you know readathons are for you and so I that's just what I decided to do so executive position so I'm going to tell you about solar books that I read for the read-a-thon I finished all the prompts except the historical fiction one so first up is one of the bonus prompts and that is a short story collection her body and other parties by Carmen Maria Machado and the set from grey wolf and this is a short story my baby this is a restored collection and it is about a woman's body and how men use the woman's body and I really enjoyed this short story collection there's the first stories about a woman who has a green ribbon tied around her neck and she tells her husband you cannot touch this this is mine this is something that is mine and it's just like a metaphor for how men want to own every part of women and that kind of thing so I would really enjoy that there's a lot of similar stories there's one about two women who create a baby they have a baby and then there are other stories there's about women's body there's a lot of trigger warnings in this book that I thought thought it was very well done but sometimes I felt like a particular couple of stories that they were kind of she used sensationalism a bit too much and they were just you know kind of sounded similar to the other story so so it's not perfect for me but I really did enjoy this book and would highly recommend it and one of my favorite stories was one that she told using like every episode of Law & Order SVU and I cannot describe it like at first I thought she was just doing these quirky captions for each episode title but she's actually telling a different story in the episode titles and using the characters everything I want to know like how like how she decided to do that I thought it was very clever and very well done so that is her body and other parties my spooky or creepy or gothic book or whatever it was his mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones and this is all from William Morrow I really loved this book I thought it was fantastic normally I don't like episodic type stories or novels but I thought this was great so it starts out with this kid who's comes from a family of werewolves and this incident happens and they have to leave their home and he travels with the Zayn and uncle across the United States and it alternates between this continuous narrative from that point forward and then these random flashbacks - and he was really little and first learning about werewolves so you get these episodes that move the narrative forward and also these flashback kind of episodes and each one contains almost their own little story of stuff that happens and there's an overarching narratives and different things it's just really well done I've never read Stephen Graham Jones before but I really enjoyed this book there it is kind of gruesome so there is like some stuff in it just to be aware oh I didn't think it was too much I didn't think it was good - it is I thought it was great especially I mean it's a horror book who were Eskimo I just really enjoyed it I thought it was a lot of fun and it was I mean you know her body and how the parties was really intense and kind of soul sucking not in like a bad way but like a really intense kind of way because there's so much in it and this one was just fun and I felt like it was a nice palate cleanser is it was really good and I'll definitely be reading Stephen Graham Dern's again the book that I read set in a cold location is a man called Bouvet and this is by Frederic Bachman and I used this as a palate cleanser from some of the one of the books I'm going to talk about here in a second but this is um out from atria books and this is just a delightful read guys like it's so much fun it's basically like the old man from up it's that story only set in Sweden in a more realistic type way and I absolutely adore this book it's a lot of fun a narrator is just perfect and it is yeah I love the movie and I just love the book as well so it's like this marginally old man who everything needs to be in its place and then your two voice I have to say is just perfect so if you want something that is light-hearted but still has a little bit of you know substance to it I friend described it as old man fluff I think it was worth just fluff but I was definitely one of those heartwarming kind of reads not quite harm our channel but I really I really enjoyed this book like yeah I'm rereading more of Fred Bachmann stuff I'm the last two books or I would say it will probably be my favorite of the read-a-thon and I want to talk about them together because I feel like they go together and that is endures are not the only fruit and I be happy when you could be normal both by Jeanette Winterson I read this the beginning of the read-a-thon and this was my last book because I wanted to separate them to let them sit so in oranges are not the only fruit is the fictionalized account that Jeanette wrote when she was 25 about her childhood and how she grew up with a mother very abusive mom basically uh who was a Pentecostal and her mom had really struggled with a lot of mental health problems and just just a lot of problems she was not a good person and she really Jeanette's adopted so she would tell her that she must have picked the wrong crib as like a punishment and I was just like what it was pretty appalling but it did make you think and made me think a lot and she wrote this as I said when she was 25 and while reading it I was very moved by if I felt like I could tell it was her first novel and I felt like I would try anything how to describe it and I feel like it's she was holding back and she was softening the blow of her childhood so I felt like it wasn't quite the best that she could do and you know I really enjoyed it but it was like well I'm not exactly blown away by it because I feel like there's more there that she's not telling us and that was true actually and that's I feel part of the reason why she wrote why be happy when you could be normal and and this she holds nothing back her writing style is absolutely impeccable and it's not linear like our news are not the only fruit and she talks about the differences that she did soften up oranges that she brought a character into that would comfort the protagonist when you know Dan herself didn't really have that comfort and it was much more difficult than she just in the book but she was trying to make sense of it but this is a much more mature Jeanette she wrote this when she was this came out in 2011 while oranges came out in 1985 so there was like what like 30 years or something about almost 30 years between the two books and yeah I and then this one she moves forward like to her time at Oxford and eventually me like her birth mother and the different things that she went through yeah this one just knocked my socks off I I don't really know how to describe it any other way is definitely a 5-star read for me and I felt like there was just so much meaning that Jeanette talked about and how you know her childhood really changed her life and her art having to come to terms with you know her mom and just she describes it as like an open wound that will never heal and that she just has to care for and deal with and that she doesn't think we're really ever heal but she's just trying to work with what she has and I thought that was very beautiful and I thought that you know her talking about working-class people it's absolutely fantastic I felt like I had met American versions of these people from where I grew up and I just thought it was everything it was everything that I had hoped it would be and that's why I think they definitely go together this is where like you know the younger Jeannette writing about her life trying to come to terms but not wanting to admit how horrible it was and I think that this is definitely Jeannette and more mature Jeanette Winterson coming to terms with everything and it's just they go together and so I would have the I recommend that you definitely read oranges first I think that's pretty much a requirement and then this one is the second part so they definitely go together and they're both pretty short oranges about 200 pages and this is 225 so it's not that you know it's not what really but she packed a ton in here it's just amazing he's so storytelling and fairy tales and folklore like Oh like when I finished I was just like that's me sitting on the couch finishing the book how much finished it last night but I was like it's funny a maestra plot I could have picked so yeah and both of those are out from Grove in the US just in case you're wondering but those are definitely ones I'm gonna be putting on my chip I list because they are just absolutely beautiful so that is all of the books that I read for the autumn read-a-thon I hope you enjoyed that please let me know if you ran these books how did your automate a thon turnout if you did a vlog please let me know I want to watch them you can link in the down below and be forever grateful but otherwise just tell me what you read waiting read recently how was your Halloween etc and I guess I will talk to you later guys bye\n"