"Boating for Beginners" by Jeanette Winterson

 This is a retelling of the story of Noah in the same way that the Life of Brian is a retelling of the story of Jesus. It has the narrative structure of a story but beyond that it is post-modern surrealism. It is, I suppose, a comic novel (and regular readers of this blog will know that I struggle with finding these funny): it pokes fun in all directions. It obviously abandons any attempt at verisimilitude and the characters are little more than caricatures. It is enormously inventive but I found it rather wearisome, even though it is only a short book. It is fundamentally Pythonesque, and I never really understood Monty Pyhton humour, so I suppose I was never going to appreciate this book. I didn't really understand its purpose. Was it just an extended piece of fun? Or was there something I was missing?

Perhaps the clue lies in what Winterson's romantic novelist character says about her own work: "She liked to think that her prose had many levels. Of course she told a story, what novel does not? (Except for those very dreary experimental things that were only fit for wrapping up vegetables.) Yes, she told a story, but her prose, like lasagne, was layered. There were strange undercurrents and frivolous cheesy bits and serious meaty bits and a spicy sauce, and of course there was pasta, the body of the book, but who would be content with just pasta?" (p 132)

Having said that, there were some brilliant bits:

• "It was the first time that Gloria had been shocked out of her autonomous inner life. She lived at the bottom of a deep pool where her mother and the rest of the world were only seen as vague shadows on the surface. Now she was being forced into a graceless breaststroke to find out what everyone else wss talking about." (p 18)
• "'The Meaning of Life', began Doris slowly, 'is death.  ... All your clothes are rotting, all your food is putrefying, you're covered in dead skin and your bowels are full of muck.'" (p 24)
• "'I only started this morning and I'm waiting for someone to tell me what to do next'. Gloria wasn't aware of it, but she had just summed up her whole life in one sentence." (p 27)
• "There does seem to be a relationship between wealth and the inner life. If you aren't rich you don't tend to want a shrink." (p 32)
• "If you've dropped a stitch somewhere in the jumper of life, you have to pick it up again or your pattern will come out lopsided." (p 65)
• "Noah was right wing, suspicious of women and totally committed to money as a medium for communication. Yet when he spoke he charmed. He could transform his audiences' dull grey lives for an hour or two. ... He became a focus for pain and disappointment, urged his audience to lay their burden down and rest in him, told them they'd see their country become great again, painted a bright future for their children. ... The sinister side lay in their attitude those those who didn't believe. If you refused the message you were an outcast." (pp 69 - 70)
• "Why should a God of love disown a large part of his beloved?" (p 70)
• "Have you ever known someone to have the power and not use it?" (p 72)
• "Too many of us lead a size ten fantasy life with a thirty-inch waistline." (p 120)

I think I may have missed the joke but it was an interesting reading experience. November 2020; 160 pages

This review was written
by the author of Motherdarling