The PowerBook

by Jeanette Winterson

Book Overview

Adding to an already astounding body of work that explores the nature of love and desire, Jeanette Winterson ( Sexing the Cherry , Oranges are Not the Only Fruit , The Passion ) presents a stunning... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375411119
• ISBN13: 9780375411113
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 289 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Love is an assault course.

I have read this book at least once a year for over ten years now. I carry a copy of it in my car wherever I go. I have multiple copies all over my house and I can recite passages from memory. I am in the midst of reading it right now. The first time I picked it up I had lost possibly the most meaningful love of my life. This book took me through that loss that I thought I would never recover from. It reads like poetry and it helped me stop struggling against the pain and accept that there really are some things you never get over, some loves that never leave you, and that the suffering is sometimes a beautiful thing. “There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet.” I’ve read other works of Winterson’s and many of them are good but The PowerBook is by far the best in my opinion. No work of word based art has ever inspired so many emotions nor so many works of my own art. It has shaped my literary preferences and developed the way that I read. The PowerBook will change you. “You say you want to be transformed.” If you have ever loved beyond reason, if you have ever experienced that passion that defies logic, if you believe that the treasure is really there- read this book. If you don’t understand the first time, read it again, then once more. You will find a new feeling or a new perspective or piece of wisdom every time. I never know how to truly describe the PowerBook. It is a novel that reads like poetry without the pomp. It is the most raw and beautiful book I’ve ever had the pleasure of opening up page by page. I have never loved a book more.

Impressive. Surprised no other reviews

I am surprised that there have been no (none!) reviews of this beautifully written fascinating book. Perhaps reason is that it somehow got classified as science fiction which it certainly is not. It is almost an extended poem on love with various expressions of it through characters from many different times and cultures.

After repeated readings...

Winterson's "The PowerBook" gets better and better. Potentially one of her more esoteric and theoretical works, "PowerBook" details the virtual experiences of Ali/x and her reader (you). I'll confess that I found it a bit overwhelming at first read, but nonetheless haunting enough to give it a second go. With each repeated reading, I've come to love "The PowerBook" more and more. Winterson's classic style, with her musings on love, life, time and desire, is in top form here. The updating and modernizing of the medium allows for new insights into the "same old topics," as well as the chance to literally re-write the plots of the characters as needed. Though not as easily accessible as "Written on the Body" or even "Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit," I think that "The PowerBook" does ultimately surpass both in its revelations and superb writing. If you've read it once and merely liked it, read it again to love it. If you're considering reading it, jump in; be prepared to savor it again if needed. It'll be a pleasure every time.

Scheherazade for the 21st Century

If you're someone who loves the power of words, who loves lush, poetic prose and the images it can conjure, the magic it can work, then you will probably love Jeanette Winterson's beautiful novel, "The Powerbook.""The Powerbook" explores Winterson's recurring themes of time, love and gender identificantion (or the lack of it) through the story of Ali/Alix, a woman living in cyberworld and reinventing herself at another's command. But reinventing yourself doesn't come without a price as Ali/Alix soon finds out. Will she pay it? And if she does, will it be worth the price? For me, "The Powerbook" is Jeanette Winterson at her very best. Everything that was so wonderful in her previous novels comes together in this one. She tells stories, she writes the most lyrically divine prose, she uses linear time and circular time, she anchors herself in reality while letting herself soar on flights of fancy."The Powerbook" is art for the sake of art. Although some would argue that "art for the sake of art," especially in the literary realm, is nothing but conceit, Winterson herself, has stated differently and I agree with her. Art, she said, is our opportunity to get things right. To tell the truth. To find the ultimate reality. And she's right. Art doesn't deceive us, except on very rare occasions, and when those rare occasions do occur, we're angry with the artist.I know that many people will read this book and wail, "But that's not real life!" Those who do should stop and reread the book once again. And even again and again if need be. It's life that tells us lies, either deliberately or by omission, life that deceives, life that denies us the rich world of fantasy and imagination and creative invention...the world that Winterson seeks and finds in her own strikingly original work.In "The Powerbook," Winterson allows her narrator to become a part of his/her own stories, to become a character in them, to reinvent himself/herself to suit the needs of the receiver. While this book is not conventionally plotted, there are stories in "The Powerbook," and they are wonderful stories indeed. One of the best is a meandering, poetic discourse on the meaning of life and love and death. "I was happy with the lightness of being in a foreign city," Winterson writes, evoking Milan Kundera's wonderful "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "and the relief from identity that it brings." And later, "There was such lightness in me that I had to be tied to the pommel of the saddle...""The Powerbook" is set in London and Paris and on the beautiful island of Capri as well as in the world of cyberspace, employing both the world of reality and the world of fantasy in the very best mix possible. The lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur in this book, but they blur in real life as well. Who can say exactly how much of an experience is "real" and exactly how much exists in the imagination?And, as she does in every book, Winterson mesmerizes us with her im

warning: this story might change you....

i knew when i got this book, i was in for something special. it's about the internet, but the internet only serves as winterson's canvas to alter reality, even create new ones. her writing is dreamy, like an elixir spinning in your bloodstream. time and distance are futile boundaries conquered by her pen. characters change periods, countries, and genders, making you wonder if your so-called reality is safe. several different tales run through the book, never connecting, but all are about love. jeannette writes about love as if it were natural as breathing. ali doesn't just write stories, s/he is a story, this book will be new everytime you read it. you will never read anything more creative or erotic

There is no love that does not pierce the hands and the feet

Jeanette Winterson's The Powerbook manages to accomplish in only 289 pages what other books cannot accomplish in 1000...suggesting that all time is one. Winterson has made it perfectly clear elsewhere ("Art Objects: Essays on Ecstacy and Effrontery") that "all art belongs to a single period". Winterson interweaves myth, fact, history, drama, comedy, charm, wit, all in a mesmerizing voice that carries itself in a blend of rhythm, logic, revelation, beauty.What is particularly fascinating about this novel is that there is no plot, but a series of themes that run through the fragmented novel. It is as though she has grabbed a whole of beauty, smashed it, and reassembled it. A few readings show that the otherwise unrelated characters do have some dependancy on each other, to continue the story where their mentioning ends, to reveal nuances that their actions would otherwise obscure. This book moves through several characters, through the eyes of women and men, and we find out what it is like to feel and act anf love like a man and as a woman. Francesca loves Paolo and we fall in love with him too (the haunting line "Paolo il bello" resonates) but through the story of Guinevere and Lancelot it is through Lancelot's eyes that we are, and the object of our affection is Guinevere.This is a fully realised work, and if we compare Oranges and this we see vast differences...it makes me wonder what novels Jeanette Winterson will be composing for the next 30 to 40 years of her life. I, for one, will read them all upon moment of publication.