Amy Butler Duffle Pattern \

First read: 15.10.10

I haven't liked Winterson this much since The Passion , i think. A bit like The Powerbook this tries to analyse the relationship between storytelling and life. And the cyclical nature of both. So the main character, Billy, goes through similar experiences in different lifetimes, and slowly the very same story becomes more transparent, clearer. The ending is a bit wonky, but I think it was bound to be, with a story about how there are not endings . It's strange that even as it should be hard to read with the multiple retellings and the imaginery, it's taken me but a few days, it might more my mood than the book, admitedly. Have

quotes:

☀ Am I a prude? Am ia moralistic? Am I Letting life's riches pass me by? Why do I want to go for a walk in the woods and say nothing Until you turn to me and I take your face in Both Hands and kiss you?

☀ I do not even know who you are. PP. 20

☀ The science never gets as far as the strangeness. The more sophisticated and equipment, the stranger it Detects the worlds. Sometimes I think I'm sailing through to Vast Thought. PP. 47

☀ "Stories Are always true," Said Handsome. "It's the facts That mislead." PP. 53

Strange to dream in the right shape and build in the wrong shape, maybe But That Is What We Do Every Day, never a dream Believing That Could tell the truth. PP. 62

☀ ... I Do not Know Which Is Worse: to be wrongfully or mistakenly Accused understood. PP. 63

☀ "Exactly," Said Spike, glancing at me. "Humans Have Given Their away all power to a" they. You Are not Able to fight the system Without the system Because none of you Can Survive. You Made A World Without alternatives, and now it is dying, and your new world Already Belongs to "they."

"I Never Heard of an activist robot," Said Pink.

"It's just one more thing we're going to Have to Be On Your Behalf," PP. 65

☀ "Do not regret it." Said Spike. "Change it if you Have to, but Do not regret it." PP. 69

☀ "..XC "I do now."
"But ..."
"I know it's impossible, But so much That you've Already Happened Seemed impossible." "Only the impossible is worth the effort." PP. 90-91



☀
Emerson Said That the Rarest thing on the planet is a Truly individual action - But I'd Set the bar at a story Told. It's why the Nineteenth-century writers and satisfyingly long USCH Favoured Plotted novels. Some of Them - George Eliot - really Believed There Was Something to tell And That We Could tell it. Dickens Knew That We Could very well not, But I Told it anyway, glittering and bravery.

PP. 125
☀ \right, loneliness is Not about Being by yourself. that's fine, right and good, Desire In Many Ways. Loneliness is about Finding a landing-place, or not, and Knowing That, whatever you do, you CAN go back there. The Opposite of loneliness isn't company, it's return. A place to return. " PP. 145

☀

There are so Many Things That We Nearly do and They Do not matter at all, and There Are The Things That We Do That Would Nearly change everything. PP. 167 ☀
... I'm lucky to be alive enough to Be Unhappy.
PP. 169

☀ What I Had no idea i was going to do,but it occurred to me that this was usual, and it is only habit and routine that makes the void look like purpose. PP. 170

☀  I thought of what Friday would be saying to all of this - Utopian, flaky, unreal. But who was she harming? Who would she harm? The realistic, hard-headed practical types got us to the edge of melt-down. PP. 175 ☀ 

\he brain doesn't have separate regions for past and future; only the present is differentiated by the brain. PP. 204

2010, 2010: novel in english, book-2010, #novel, *author: female, @read in english, author: jeanette winterson, +postmodern, +feminism, +lesbian, +gay, +on writing

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