I would like to share some more excerpts so you can get a feeling for the writing style. The oddity of her upbringing alone would give ample opportunity for such distancing. I didn’t find that aspect particularly off-putting at all though. Jeanette is not a gushy character she comes across as disconnected and very dry and I can see how readers may find her to be oddly remote and unsympathetic.
I found the style of writing extremely easy going, and I loved the dark humour. In the end I really enjoyed reading this short novel and just like The White Tiger there is plenty to think about as you go. Devout to the point of madness, eye-wateringly so from early on in the book. She does not really improve on reading, but she certainly is a character and a half.
There were friends and there were enemies.Įnemies were: The Devil (in his many forms)Īnd so we are introduced to Mother.
At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She was in the white corner and that was that. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle it didn’t matter what. To give you an example of the writing style and her mother we can start right at the beginning, on the first page of the novel. One part of me loved the writing style and the humour of the storytelling, while the other part of me flinched repeatedly at the story being told and the behaviour of the characters, especially Jeanette’s mother. Rather like my experience of reading The White Tiger, I was in two minds as I read through this short novel. Jeanette is a natural orator and is excellent at converting folk to the church, until one day she falls in love.Īnd her first love affair challenges her faith, her church and ultimately her relationships with everyone. All is going along as per the plan, even with detours to “the breeding ground”, also known as school, because her mother might go to jail otherwise. Her mother intends her to be a missionary for their church, in the mould of her spiritual guide and missionary idol, Pastor Spratt. Jeanette is brought up to preach and convert the Heathen. It is set in the bleakness of a mill town in the north of England in the 1960s. The novel follows the early life and coming of age of Jeanette, a young girl adopted into a working class evangelical family. Oranges are not the Only Fruit is the 1985 winner of the Whitbread Award for First Novel.
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