Evoking modern physics and antique metaphysics, Winterson's ambitiously eccentric narrative challenges her readers to rupture the boundaries of conventional perceptions and linear experience of time. Her narrative voices, alternating between a Rabelaisian giantess and her foundling son, collapse at times into one another and the characters plunge vertiginously through time and space. On the one hand reworking fairy tales, and on the other evoking the filth, squalor and exuberant bawdiness of 17th-century England in the throes of civil war, Winterson ( The Passion ) eventually locates her characters in present-day London. Graced with striking similes and poetic cadences, the author's prose is clean and strong, and the disjunctive elements of her narrative are integrated elegantly. But the novel's freakish characters and flights of surreal fancy are insufficient to redeem its overwrought artifice. The work is further limited by its stridently dogmatic feminism, which, contemptuously belittling all men as arrogantly stupid bullies who are vastly women's inferiors in maturity and moral fiber, vitiates its ostensible intent to transcend the narrowness of human perception.

珍妮特•温特森（Jeanette Winterson）

当代最好也是最有争议性的作家之一。1959年，生于英格兰的曼彻斯特。自小由笃信宗教的夫妇收养。当时家中有六本书，其中《亚瑟王之死》激发了温特森对书本和写作的渴望。1978年，温特森开始恋爱，离家出走。她在殡仪馆、精神病院等地打工，但仍以全A的成绩考进牛津大学英语系。1985年，处女作《橘子不是唯一的水果》出版，荣获惠特布莱德处女作奖。由她亲自改编的同名BBC剧集也大获好评，获得各项国际大奖。

温特森自此一跃成为英国文坛最耀眼的作家。英国BBC电视台的“女性时间”与橘子文学奖合作，推出一项“女性分水岭小说”提名票选活动，温特森有三本小说入选，是入选频率最高的当代的作家。

代表作品有：《激情》《给樱桃以性别》《写在身体上》《艺术与谎言》《苹果笔记本》《守望灯塔》等。

2006年，温特森以其杰出的文学成就被授予大英帝国勋章（OBE）。