Art And Lies

Product Description 'There is no such thing as autobiography, there is only art and lies'. Set in a London of the near future, its three principal characters, Handel, Picasso and Sappho, separately flee the city and find themselves on the same train, drawn to one another through the curious agency of a book. Stories within stories take us through the unlikely love affairs of one Doll Sneerpiece, an 18th century bawd, and into the world of painful beauty where language has the power to heal. Art & Lies is a question and a quest: How shall I live? Review "Winterson's most ambitious work . . . beautiful writing, shaped line by line into word sculptures. . . . I salute Winterson's skill at word-turning and word-spinning, her ability to mint shining images in a few golden lines." The Independent on Sunday, U.K. "Several leaps forward in sophistication and technique from The Passion, which won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. . . . A smooth-running . . . piece of machinery, which throws out . . . brilliant sparks." The Gazette "Dazzling. . . . Truly exciting to read." The Times, (UK) "Powerful." The Toronto Sun "Winterson soars with Art and Lies." The Calgary Herald "Expands the gender game . . . hurtles along so breathtakingly. . . . Intriguing. . . . Profound." Now magazine "If words were diamonds and sentences necklaces, Jeanette Winterson would be the De Beers of literature." Entertainment Weekly From the Back Cover 'There is no such thing as autobiography, there is only art and lies'. Set in a London of the near future, its three principal characters, Handel, Picasso and Sappho, separately flee the city and find themselves on the same train, drawn to one another through the curious agency of a book. Stories within stories take us through the unlikely love affairs of one Doll Sneerpiece, an 18th century bawd, and into the world of painful beauty where language has the power to heal. "Art & Lies is a question and a quest: How shall I live? About the Author A novelist whose honours include England’s Whitbread Prize, and the American Academy’s E. M. Forster Award, as well as the Prix d’argent at the Cannes Film Festival, JEANETTE WINTERSON burst onto the literary scene as a very young woman in 1985 with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her subsequent novels, including Sexing the Cherry, The Passion, Written on the Body, and The PowerBook, have also gone on to receive great international acclaim. She lives in London and the Cotswolds. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The man lay with his head propped on the book. The back of his skull felt hot, not hot and sticky as his forehead did, but as though his head had been packed with embers. There were ashes in his mouth. He opened his eyes and saw the neutral roof of the train. He breathed consciously, hating the flat air, and it seemed to him that every dead thing in his life was crouching over him, taking the air. He got up suddenly, too quickly, saw the train in a whirligig out of the bullseyes of his sockets. Round and round the neutral patterned seats, round and round the faux wood tables, the still train spinning. Twisted faces lurched at him as he was caught in a kaleidoscope of arms. Round and round, the sick of his stomach, and the rouletting train. He fell. He fell at the window with both fists, impossible, against the safety glass. In his dream terror he saw the hammer, or was it the axe, strapped snug in a little red holder against the heave. He put his hand through the shattering plastic, and heard somewhere, a long way off, the dull ugly bell that warned him to go back to the schoolroom, back to the operating theatre, that the oxygen was low, that someone was at the door to see him. The door. He found the door, sealed in its protective, insulating rubber, and with all his strength, he brought the axe to cleave the seam. The vacuum dispersed. The doors bounced apart, just enough for him to shove the haft between them, and then he