Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

St Just Monday Morning Reading Group 21st August 2023.

Why be happy when you could be normal? Jeanette Winterson.

The reading group was divided in its opinions of this book. Some thought it was wonderful; others were not impressed. Some found it to be written with great joy and energy, highly vivid and interesting; others saw it as a book that the writer ‘needed to write’ – a cathartic exercise, rather than something for an audience. More than one reader (though not the whole group) didn’t like the beginning of the book, but thought the second half was much more readable. Several people had a problem with the way it appeared to be written in very separate segments. Some enjoyed the factual pieces about Manchester, and about Marx and Engels.

Quite a lot of points arose in our discussion. We all noted that the author was sure that her hard life had moulded her into the person she became, and that despite the very obvious cruelties enacted upon her during childhood and adolescence, she wouldn’t have had things differently. We did remark upon the harshness of Mrs Winterson’s treatment of her adopted daughter, and how her Christian community (and her husband) closed their eyes to it all. The crucial point behind the maltreatment, one reader mentioned, was that though Mrs Winterson had apparently wanted to adopt a child instead of having one of her own, she had really wanted not a daughter but a son. We also puzzled slightly over Jeanette’s fairly rapid closing of the door upon her birth mother and family when she found them; we talked about the complexity of meeting one’s mother as an adult; and we realised that the author had said herself that because of her childhood she was unable to receive love, which goes some way towards explaining this rejection.

We talked about some of the changes which have occurred during the author’s lifetime (she was born in 1959), and how she thought that things (in Accrington, at least) had stayed the same between 1959 and 1979, the changes appearing mostly from the 1980s onwards. We considered this statement and generally agreed with it, noting that some advances, such as inside bathrooms and motorised transport, tended to happen more rapidly in cities than in rural areas.

Jeanette Winterson’s book Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, was recalled by several people; we thought that Why be happy was either a companion volume to the other title, or else a more factual account of the author’s childhood as compared with the more fictionalised Oranges. We also saw that the author has written several children’s books, and we wondered what these were like.

This is the 'true' story of the author's childhood in the grim north of England in the 1960s. Full of black humour it is a celebration of the power of literature to set us free from our circumstances. Jeanette Winterson wrote another book of her childhood, called 'Oranges are not the only Fruit' 30 years ago and the book was televised by the BBC. Why Be Happy... is closer to the true story of the author's life.

I read and enjoyed'Oranges are not the only fruit' in teh 80s, but have been less impressed by some of Winterson's later books. Nevertheless, I was intrigued, not only by the title of this one, but also by the thought of finding out how close to the truth 'Oranges' was.
It's quite a short book but it captures the same funny, yet horrifying, experiences of Jeanette's strange upbringing.
She comes across as painfully honest, recognising that she can be a difficult personality, but remarkably free of bitterness. Her search for her birth mother is not without incident, or indeed red herrings, and although the initial meeting goes well, there is no happy ever after ending.
The last sentence in the book is 'I have no idea what happens next' but I feel privileged to have been a witness to at least part of her journey.