Boating for Beginners

Jeanette Winterson
Methuen

A pleasure boat company is transformed when the proprietor, Noah, is chosen by the "One True God" to put "sunny" faith back in the world and women back in the kitchen.

Following on from the success of 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit' Winterson decided to rewrite the story of Noah and his ark which, on the surface, seems a fairly odd idea until you've read it and then you'll be convinced that it is a very odd idea indeed.

Winterson's biblical tale is a fever dream of gossip, romance novels, frozen food, celebrity and stupidity. It's of us and a potential end of us but a back then sort of us that's pretty much entirely the same as the now us except with a capricious Frankenstein's dairy deity.

It doesn't work.  I like Winterson when she lets her ideas run wild - 'Sexing the Cherry' is a real favourite - but this is just a bit silly.  The core relationship between the women is fun but the rest is bogged down in absurdities and everything dissolves into a bit of a chore that fizzles out in the end.

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The Daylight Gate

Jeanette Winterson
Hammer

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Hill, Lancashire.
A mysterious gathering of thirteen people is interrupted by local magistrate, Roger Nowell. Is this a witches' Sabbat?
Two notorious Lancashire witches are already in Lancaster Castle waiting trial. Why is the beautiful and wealthy Alice Nutter defending them? And why is she among the group of thirteen on Pendle Hill?
Elsewhere, a starved, abused child lurks. And a Jesuit priest and former Gunpowder plotter, recently returned from France, is widely rumoured to be heading for Lancashire. But who will offer him sanctuary? And how quickly can he be caught?
This is the reign of James I, a Protestant King with an obsession: to rid his realm of twin evils, witchcraft and Catholicism, at any price...

To my mind Winterson is one of the unsung heroes of current weird and supernatural fiction.  I've been a fairly devoted reader of her work since I was handed a copy of 'Sexing The Cherry' back in 93 / 94.

This latest excursion into the unusual side of life takes us back to Pendle, Lancashire at the time of the witch hunts where the wealthy newcomer Alice Nutter, proud and confident in her rightness and her self and unwilling to kowtow to local bigwigs and their toadies becomes embroiled in the lives of a local family accused of witchcraft.  The reign of James the First is an unhealthy time to have any association with witchcraft or popery and Alice has both.

For much of the narrative Winterson retains a degree of period normality, peopling the cast with uneducated, superstitious peasants, officious religious zealots and people just trying to get along in an uncertain time.  Behind this though there is an undercurrent of magic about which you are left, for much of the novel, uncertain about whether it is real or simply superstition and vain hope.

The book's devastating final act allows us to see beyond the mundane circumstances and as such we are granted an understanding of both Alice and her motivations.

Over the years there have been several of Winterson's novels that have earned a permanent place on my shelves and I'm pleased that this story of humanity at it's most vile, most compassionate and most incredible will be joining them.

Buy it here - The Daylight Gate (Hammer)

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Below is a short snippet from a talk by Winterson about the book.  The full version can be found by clicking here.