The Passion, Jeanette Winterson

It’s been a while since I read a magical book, so this week I picked up an old favourite, and re-read my dog-eared copy of Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion. An epic tale which straddles early nineteenth-century Europe, The Passion is set amongst the frozen wastes of Russia and the exotic, crumbling decadence of Venice. This is the story of Henri, a young Frenchman sent to fight in the Napoleonic wars, and of Villanelle, a cross-dressing Venetian woman, born with webbed feet.

Although the action takes place during the Napoleonic era, and the book conveys a wonderful sense of the period, the author rejects the idea that The Passion is a historical novel. Instead, Winterson suggests that the novel uses history as “invented space”, a setting for magical characters and weird and wonderful events. “The Passion is set in a world where the miraculous and the everyday collide,” she writes on her website. “Villanelle can walk on water. The woman she loves steals her heart and hides it in a jar. This is the city of mazes. You may meet an old woman in a doorway. She will tell your fortune depending on your face. The Passion is about war, and the private acts that stand against war. It’s about survival and broken-heartedness, and cruelty and madness.”

Jeanette Winterson

I particularly love The Passion‘s magical descriptions of Venice, a city that morphs and changes overnight, rising and sinking, a place that is confusing and disorientating for even the inhabitants. Apparently a film version was once on the cards, but it never came to be. I am rather glad to be honest, as I’d prefer to hold on to my own visions of the harsh Russian winter, of that enchanted water-logged city, of the amazing adventures of Henri and Villanelle and the bizarre cast of characters that they encounter on their long, mysterious journey.

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