Written on the Body ("WOB") was an attempt to measure love through the medium of loss. "Why is the measure of love loss?" flashes the start of the novel. It soon becomes apparent that the narrator's sense of loss of his/her girlfriend is the focus of this short novel. Winterson writes beautifully in her description of the anguish, fear, and helplessness that grips a person who has lost a love, but at the same time, the fine form and clarity of the writing appears brittle because the novel lacks depth. Let me explain. An important part that might have made this a greater novel is missing. Winterson did not, in my view, develop the love that the narrator lost, and show us what it was like at its prime. We are brought to grapple and empathize with the narrator in his/her loss but we do not know what that love was and how it developed. Can one measure a void without knowing what was there before?

There are a couple of small matters that I should like to mention. One is that the word "not" was obviously missing from the text at page 62. Another typographical error appears at page 89. Had she intended to have written "..."bloody body longing" or "body bloody longing" instead of "...body body longing"? Secondly, many critics refer to the "genderless' narrator. I think that the narrator was female. Winterson admitted that the book was part autobiographical. Further, at page 152 the narrator said "I had a boyfriend once..." Male speakers wouldn't have said that.

This is a fine book about love. It sets the reader thinking all the time, transposing the narrator's words into the reader's own experience. No doubt no two readers may have shared an identical personal story of his/her love, WOB will kindle deep, personal reflections on that undefined and, perhaps ineffable idea of love. Winterson's own love life (it was said that another writer's wife became her girl-friend) might have provided the fascination and insight into the love that was written.

This is the worst book I've read in a long time. I felt like reading soft porn, with a narrative going nowhere. And the main character seems to have too much time to spare. Doesn't he/she have a job like regular people? I couldn't get myself to finish it!!

Received book in condition described. Prompt shipping. No issues. Would do business with this seller again.

One to highlight as if it was a textbook full of life wisdom. The plentiful nuggets of simile have a way of taking root in the soul.

The gender ambiguity that others rave about didn't matter much to me, but I'm not hung up on such identity. It was the depth of emotion, the transformative power of love and lust, that resonated.

This is poetry wrapped in prose.

This book left me breathless - not metaphorically, but actually literally. I found myself cold, hot, shivering, and consumed by its power and its glory. I read about love and lust in ways I could not have imagined. I felt uplifted and weighed down by their weight and their weightlessness. I fell in love, and in lust, with the words of Jeanette Winterson.

[I feel so giddy having read this book that I don't really think I can write a very sensible review; but I need to share my feelings, so I'm giving it a shot. Bear with me. Please.]

This is a tale of the unbelievable highs and unfathomable lows that the human spirit can reach; it's a tale of paradise gained and paradise lost; a tale of fickleness and fidelity; a tale of right, wrong, and everything in between - all part and parcel of the journey called life and love. For sure, the tales are not new, but never have I read anybody else capture the truth and the secrets of this arduous and pleasurable undertaking the way Winterson does. From the first sentence of the book onwards "Why is the measure of love loss?" Winterson sets the tone: probing, honest, and dark. Even when there is the joy and light and pleasure of love, it's still somehow dark. But it's beautiful. Every bit of it.

Winterson's not just proved to be a brilliant observer and chronicler of human nature, but a genuinely fresh and crisp voice in the overcrowded world of literature. She's extremely stylistic, yet somehow extremely simple and direct. She's intelligent, and can play with narrative styles, voices, sequences, et al, and yet keep the book the extremely coherent.

I won't say more - just that this book is outstanding, and that I would recommend every lover of love and literature read this. And read it now, for anytime else would be late.