Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?  By Jeanette Winterson

2012

Weight: 10 oz

Method of Disposal: Giving to Tracy

A volunteer at the shelter offered to have this book shipped to me from the UK, her home.  I always get Winterson’s books shipped from overseas because it takes a year for them to come out in the United States.  She worked some kind of magic though.  It is usually very expensive, but not this year. 

I was so excited for its arrival, and I devoured it once I had it in my hands.  I was smitten.  I wanted to reclaim any other Winterson book I might have stupidly let go.  I wanted to herd them all together and put them somewhere safe.  I tried to give up this biography as soon as I finished it so that I could write about it, but I could not do it.  I was too attached.  I am not sure that I am making the right decision now.  It makes me nervous, but it is going to a good person who will enjoy it and then pass it on in the way that it should be.  How many people will read it that would not have before?

As always with Winterson, the writing was beautiful and the heart could not be denied.  The life she unraveled for us was unusual, meaningful, and when all put together, beautiful, bittersweet.  I appreciated her willingness to share so much with so many of us.  So much hard stuff.  Thank you, Jeanette, for always writing with all of you.  At least, it feels that way when you are reading it.