“Why Happy When You Can Be Normal” by Jeanette Winterson

Our first glimpse into the unusual childhood of British author Jeanette Winterson was in her 1985 semi-autobiographical novel “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.” For May, the BBC got to revisit Winterson life as she tackles her upbringing head on in her memoirs “Why Happy When You Can Be Normal”. 

She was a big woman, tallish and weighing around 20 stone. Surgical stockings, flat sandals, a Crimplene dress and a nylon headscarf. She would have done her face powder (keep yourself nice), but not lipstick (fast and loose).


Adopted as a baby by god-fearing, working-class parents, Jeanette’s mother Mrs Winterson regularly locked her out of the house, forbade her to read fiction, sewed god fearing phrases on her school gym bags and expected that she’d be a missionary when she grew up.


Instead, Jeanette Winterson secretly pored over literature by alphabetical order in her local library, became a lesbian at fifteen, was evicted at 16 and gained a place at Oxford University. Mrs Winterson couldn’t show her adopted daughter love, frequently proclaiming “The Devil led us to the wrong crib" when conflict arose. But it is the pursuit of love that compels Jeanette Winterson in this fierce, funny and often heartbreaking autobiography.


“It’s why I am a writer – I don’t say ‘decided’ to be, or ‘became’. It was not an act of will or even a conscious choice. To avoid the narrow mesh of Mrs Winterson’s story I had to be able to tell my own. Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out”


Despite the narrative being quite choppy and uncontrolled at times, “Why be happy when you can be normal” is one of the most personal and moving books the BBC has encountered.  The title comes from the real life question that Jeanette Winterson’s adopted mother asked her during her eviction from home at 16. The book then follows her life through finding her love of literature, finishing high school, obtaining entry to Oxford, through to the publication of her first book, Oranges, her relationships and breakups, an attempted suicide, to developing a lasting relationship and a reunion with her birth mother.


"I suppose the saddest thing for me," Winterson writes now, "thinking about the cover version that is Oranges, is that I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it."


The book is splattered with phrases and paragraphs from Oranges, her pivotal work. However, her autobiography reveals that her home life depicted in Oranges was far from that of reality, which was much bleaker; she was beaten, she was often hungry, she was left all night on the doorstep by a mother whose religious excesses might even have been a secondary influence on the household,  the first being her overwhelming depression.


As her life unwinds, the reader deepens their sympathy for Jeanette and everyone involved. The demonic parents – her adoptive mother but also, to a degree, her acquiescent adoptive father – emerge by the end of the book as simply, catastrophically damaged. In the process of uncovering that, Jeanette painstakingly unpicks the damage they wreaked on her. The peace she makes with her adoptive family is, in a sense, more important and evocative than the more complicated and double-edged peace that comes with tracking down her birth mother.


We all found the book a funny and tragic tale. We all appreciated her skill as a writer and moulder of language. Andy picked the book for everyone to read, after his own first inspection. We all found the story personal and deeply moving and we all could relate to some aspect of the narrative. Mark loved the grammatical style and enjoyed the read. Raj, like Germaine Greer, wondered what story Constance Winterson may have told. Leanne reflected on Jeanettes story with her own, and how her mother had been the good mother that Jeanette lacked. Kevin wondered what Jeanette’s life may have been if she had grown up with her birth mother. Dennis loved the book and felt it was one of the most personal books the BBC had read. Despite the author feeling that she is an experimental author, Alena felt that this book was more one of experience, which Jeannette had stated she had tried to avoid. Despite this, all in all, everyone found this a very moving read.


Overall score8 ½.