After reading The Passion by
Jeanette Winterson, I don’t really have many strong feelings about it. I think
it is well written but boring at parts, but not so boring that the message it
conveys comes out clearly. But I did not really care about what it had to say
that much. It is an anti-war novel that does not try to bring anything new,
interesting or spectacular to a genre of novel whose library is almost as big
as the one with all the holocaust novels. I can’t bag on the book for that, but
I will not be giving it any unearned praise despite it simply being out of my
area of interest. I have been surprised sometimes by historical novels (I am
reading one right now that is quite good), but this one is kind of the reason I
shy away from those kinds of books. We begin in the late 18th
century in the middle of Napoleon’s conquest as we meet his faithful cook of
eight years Henri, who has been with the general through good and bad times and
has made many friends throughout his journey through Europe. We then meet
Villanelle, a web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman who works at a casino
and carries on an affair with a woman (Winterson her self is gay, and it is a
recurring theme throughout her novels). These two meet when Henri and a few
friends become disillusioned with the war and desert. Henri and Villanelle fall
in love, only to go down a dark path of murder that leads to an ending that was
confusing and too melodramatic. It is a short novel at that is not all bad, but
what was good really didn’t interest me very much. If you like historical
fiction with a twist, I guess you will like this.
Rating: 4/5
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