Engagement/Tone/Agency in Winterson's Why be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

I was really interested in the tone of this book. It was conversational and personal and I felt like it assumed a familiarity with the reader. Or rather, that the reader had a familiarity with the work/life story of the author. It was also conversational in that there were lots of tangents and it skipped through time and place. I thought that the book contained a powerful story, but as someone who hasn't read Winterson's book before I felt alienated and it was hard for me to feel 'invested' as a reader.  I didn't feel like this book was asking the reader to empathize perse, but witness the agency and resilience of the author.

I didn't feel like I was being led through the winding path of someones life story or 'put in their shoes'.  The story felt fragmented to me--I couldn't tell if an anecdote would be concluded or cut off or jump to something totally different. This might be the most effective technique to convey the chaotic and unpredictable childhood Winterson experienced.

One example of the jumping around/assuming familiarity that really stood out to me is when she says:

"I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule -- even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex with your Own Sex." (38)

It's not until page 113 that she is actually thrown out of the house.  Maybe someone who is familiar with her work would already know this. To me, it felt unsettling to be told what is going to happen next without having a sense of continuity. When was this going to be explained? It took away the impact of this event to see this statement kind of wedged between other elements of the narrative. On the other hand maybe the purpose of the book was to take away some of the impact of the cruel, irrational things that Winterson was subject to. Perhaps in framing it this way--letting us know ahead of time, it is less of a shock than it was for the narrator, giving the author agency over the story.

Early on, Winterson tells the reader:

"It's why I am a writer- I don't say 'decided' to be or 'became'. It was not an act of will or a conscious choice. To avoid the narrow mesh of Mrs. Winterson's story I had to be able to tell my own." (Winterson, 5)

Framing this book as partly a counternarrative to the story Mrs. Winterson told her is interesting and I think in that aspect it is successful. Throughout the novel, she has the power to tell both her own story and Mrs. Winterson's. The text also abruptly switches between calling her "my mother" and "Mrs. Winterson" which to me felt disjointed. 'Mrs. Winterson' creates a distance while 'my mother' directly ties them together. The first time the text switched to 'my mother' it caught me off guard. The switch back and forth was confusing, which seems to mirror the relationship of the young narrator whose mother is also a stranger. There are many broad, almost hyperbolic descriptions of Mrs. Winterson:

"Mrs. Winterson was gloriously wounded, like a medieval martyr, gouged and dripping for Jesus, and dragged her cross for all to see." (223)

These descriptions were disconcerting to me because they felt reductive. The Mrs. Winterson character could be larger-than-life and shrunk to a simile all at once. It almost felt like Mrs. Winterson was the evil ogre and the written word was the annedote against her. In this way, the author is asserting a fierce independence and power by telling the story itself.

Perhaps by including her present self in the story, Winterson is acting as the invented character from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit:

"I can say that there is a character in Oranges  called Testifying Elsie who looks after the little Jeanette and acts as a soft wall against the hurt(ling) force of Mother." (6)

In the last part of the book I felt like the tone switched. When Winterson is trying to find her birth mother I did feel a sense of urgency and being present with the narrator. The text switched to the present tense and Winterson was very emotionally present (“heart beating like a dying bird” 204). I felt more engaged in this section, partly because I ‘knew’ the author/character better and partly because I felt like I was discovering things along with the author. I didn’t know whether or not she would be able to locate her mother, what the meeting might be like--there weren’t clues.

I thought it was interesting to bring (or at least create the sense of bringing) the reader all the way up to the present. Most memoirs I have read are contained in a specific period of time. This added to the feeling of being told a story conversationally as opposed to reading a constructed text. Especially the last line:

“I have no idea what happens next.” (230)

I am interested to know if this tone/style worked for you guys.

Did you feel engaged throughout the text?

Did the jumping through time feel distracting or did it enhance the impact of the memoir?

Have you read her other work? How did that shape your reading of this book?