As a heterosexual but experimental woman, I hoped to find in "Erotica" sexual writing for a variety of tastes. However, what I actually found was an overwhelming tendency toward lesbian eroticism. Regardless, the writing was interesting, erotic, and broad-based, though the modern writers emphasized more homosexuality than heterosexuality. Overall, the book is a great introduction to feminine erotica, and empowering to those women who feel timid about their sexuality.

This elusive publication offers nine essays by theory-laden academics. The difficulty in obtaining the title pales beside the unremitting obtuseness of many of the works. Good News: There are two excellent and lucid essays which carry the book, and more than justify one's purchase of it. These are "The Emotional Politics of Reading Winterson" by Lynne Pearce and "Grand (Dis)Unified Theories?" by Helena Grice and Tim Woods, the editors.

Pearce's essay is a very creative and personal examination of her first readings of and reactions to JW's fiction. These initial responses and appraisals are then considered in the light of her re-reading of JW's work and her re-experiencing of the work and Winterson. This essay won my mind and heart immediately; Pearce bravely submitted a jargon free essay which is all the more interesting and valuable to readers of Winterson for its refusal to be ensnared by cryptic verbiage for the sake of cryptic verbiage. Grice and Woods present a close reading of "Gut Symmetries" which is both critically informed and accessible. In the process of insightfully exploring "GT", they highlight all of Winterson's abiding interests. Their essay can be applied to all of JW's novels.

I'm keeping "I'm telling you stories" for those times when re-reading is the plat du jour. The collection would be better fare if Grice and Woods had gotten from each contributor the clarifying and cogent complexity which is achieved in their essay. This early collage reviews all of JW's fiction and is, de facto, an essential work. (Re)re-reading can be fun!

jeanette winterson is my favorite writer; i'll tell you that right off. also i am all geeky for physics too, and was glad to see such obvious allusions to physical theory, even when she wasn't pedantically paraphrasing newton or einstein. she did her research, like always, which makes her seem so, i don't know... reliable perhaps?

but, it seems that the language of jeanette, which has always been the feathers in her wings, has gotten sort of old. in _written on the body_, i found myself craving the lyrical passages, waiting eagerly for them and reading them over and over. in _gut symmetries_, they just made me tired. i didn't think any of the characters were conveyed with passion, and i didn't find any of the moving, uplifting, soul-wrenching epiphanies i would expect from her. i re-read passages only to remember who she was writing about, because each was so like the next.

in this novel, more than the others i would say, jeanette gives us a conventional plot line, with your standard climax and surprising plot twists. the plot twist sure did surprise me, but it also struck me as crass, like when someone flips on a spotlight in your room at 3am, pitching you violently out of your dreams.

still, she's better than most. and still, maybe her heart flies in skies i wish for but do not occupy. but i wonder if she doesn't need to check out what's over the mountains because it seems we've seen this sky, tasted this wind, and wouldn't mind a new trick or two.

This is the third Winterson novel I've read, and I was disappointed. I read her novels because I admire her technique: she weaves the interesting aspects of physics and chemistry into the personal asepects of her characters. But in "Gut Symmetries" her refusal to follow any sort of "conventional" narrative left me craving more of a storyline. If you are thinking of buying a Winterson book, consider the much better "Written on the Body" (1992).

For those of you who haven't had the chance to hear Jeanette Winterson read her work aloud, take any opportunity that comes your way: her words fly, sing, dance around your head as she speaks them (and she has such presence). I heard extracts of Gut Symmetries at the Hay Book Festival and felt compelled to buy the book - the first of hers that I'd read. The plot lures one through sometimes difficult concepts and passages which, when read moments before sleep, can take three or four re-readings. The language is so rich that I can enjoy it three times over: in her voice, in my mind's voice and out loud (to my partner's irritation).

If you are obsessed with the work of Jeanette Winterson, you are sure to find this book interusting enough. This is one of the few books about Winterson's writing and is sure to help some people better understand her work.

though I appreciate much of Winterson's novel-length work, I was wary in beginning this colection of short fiction edited by her. It started off with several interesting and pleasant to read stories, but as a whole, offered somewhat insipid, uninsightful writing. Perhaps this because I was expecting or hoping for a driving force of surreality and otherworldly characters who carried themselves strongly and had fully developed characteristics, much like found in The Passion or Sexing the Cherry. Unfortunately, I found the collection much more like The World & Other Places or Written On The Body--without much to pull me through and keep me reading. This book, in my opinion, is only for the Winterson connisseur.