'The Passion' & 'Sexing The Cherry'

I read Sexing the Cherry my senior year of college in a writing class that I've probably talked about a dozen times on this blog.

It was assigned to me, one of three that I had to read during the semester. I forget the third, but the other was James Joyce's Ulysses. We had to pick one of the three to present a class discussion on. I avoided Ulysses and stuck with the rather short Sexing the Cherry.

I liked it a lot and it fueled my affinity for Jeanette Winterson ever since. In fact, the copy that I read recently still had my red sticky tabs from my presentation.

Both books were written back to back published within two years of each other in the late 1980s.

And both are really similar. Sexing the Cherry is a historical exaggeration and time loop. It chronicles the lives of the adventurer Jordan and his mother, the Dog Woman. Set in 17th century London, it follows the unruly rule of Charles I, dogged with civil war and religious intolerance.

Jordan and his mother are tolerant and fight against the "puritans" torturing and killing (with the stain of hypocrisy) those that don't have the same belief system.

The Passion is set in 19th century France as Napoleon Bonaparte grabs power and starts his assult on the continent of Europe. He's captured the energy of the people of France, including the farmboy Henri, who joins the army and becomes Napoleon's personal chef.

Meanwhile, Villanelle is a boyish Venetian, who deals cards at the local casino. She is married and is wound up sold for prostitution. Henri trudges to Moscow with the French army, where many die due to the cold. He deserts with his ex-Irish priest friend Patrick and Villanelle. Patrick dies. Henri and Villanelle become lovers and make it to her hometown of Venice.

The Passion isn't near the time loop that Sexing the Cherry is (the latter goes back and forth from modern times to Elizabethan England), but it captures similar attitudes about love, rage, sex and tolerance. Along with time, how it ebbs and flows and we are these little specks getting caught up in the tide, swept out to see and back aground.