What a delightful cozy read! This book was full of the comforting vibes of games like stardew valley, with enough of an interesting plot to keep your attention without too much suspense or stress of losing the cozy feeling illicited. That said there were a couple of scenes that had me tear up at the healing loveliness the imbued. This is absolutely my favorite type of read. A full five stars across the board.

”Why is the measure of love loss?”

This line appears twice within Written on the Body, but I first heard it in Winterson’s own voice in the audiobook of her memoir. It settled into me, and so I began to read Written on the Body before I even finished Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

I find it incredibly difficult to review Winterson’s work, not because there is a deficit of material worth speaking about, not for lack of connection to the text, not for an absence of appreciation for her artistry; no, is the overwhelming presence of these things that renders me struggling for speech.

I have not stopped thinking about Written on the Body after finishing, and I have revisited my highlights at least a dozen times since. I want to write this book on my own body, with its desperate depiction of love and its twin loss. In these pages Winterson has captured the corporeality of passion. This is a book about the way it feels to love a woman.

As I said in my review for her memoir, Jeanette Winterson writes in such a way that nearly every sentence feels worthy of a highlight or annotation, but none of it ever feels overwrought. My review for this book might as well be direct quotations from it. In true Winterson fashion, Written on the Body is poetic and beautiful, at times surreal and fevered, and invariably human.

Read it.

Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. To remember you it's my own body I touch. Thus she was, here and here. The physical memory blunders through the doors the mind has tried to seal. A skeleton key to Bluebeard's chamber. The bloody key that unlocks pain. Wisdom says forget, the body howls. The bolts of your collar bone undo me. Thus she was, here and here.