The Passion

The Passion is a very soft spoken book.  I don’t know if I’m saying that because of the title or it’s because it’s written by a woman and I’m being a little bit sexist, but it’s true.  As strong as the two main characters are, I can’t help but imagine them both as having a delicate Tilda Swinton-esque bone structure and a wistful tone.  I really like Jeanette Winterson in general.  She’s one of those authors that I didn’t quite get at first, but was converted after months of studying Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit at A-level with an English teacher I had a ridiculous crush on.  If I’d have been less inclined to impress him with my knowledge, I probably wouldn’t have got half as much out of the book as I did.

The book tells the story of Henri- a young man so besotted with Napoleon he joins the French Army and proceeds to follow the Emperor around Europe for eight years.  He is not a fighter; instead he works in the kitchen slaughtering innumerable chickens to slake their leader’s hunger.  It also tells the tale of Villanelle- a Venetian cross dresser who works in a casino seducing men and women alike until she is eventually sold to the French Army by her possessive husband.  The pair’s obsessions themselves are arbitrary as Winterson focuses on the after effects of passion, rather than the thing itself.  Henri’s love turns to hatred as sees that Napoleon has no desire to end the wars and he eventually deserts the army.  Villanelle falls in love with a woman she can never be with and, after spending nine nights with her the pair are separated by circumstance.  It is the bittersweet kind of love that although it is never replaced burns itself out with time.  As Winterson writes earlier in the novel, “time is a great deadener.”

For a book called The Passion, both its leads also have strange relationships with their hearts.  It’s not quite accurate to say that both lose their hearts to their obsession.  Villanelle willing and literally gives hers away to her lover forcing Henri to steal it back from an abandoned mansion years later.  Henri is more complex still.  He lives in a contradictory state in which in order to fulfil his passion for Napoleon he gives up his heart and his passion for life.  Henri, however, believes that, “there’s no pawnshop for the heart.  You can’t take it and leave it awhile in a clean cloth and redeem it in better days.”  Although he only loses it in the metaphorical sense; he is the one unable to regain his heart completely.

If I’m honest, one of the main reasons that I enjoyed reading this book so much is simply because I have wanted to visit Venice for years.  I remember reading a book called City of Masks when I was quite young and falling in love with the idea of the place.  Granted, that City of Masks is set in a parallel Venice-inspired city, but the point stands.  It’s a place that I have a terrible habit for romanticising in my mind; I can just imagine getting lost on its winding waterways and backstreets (with my sense of geography a very real possibility) and The Passion plays into the picture I have of the city exactly.  It reminded how much I still want to go there, apparent smell aside.

I was saying after Oscarand Lucinda that I felt a bit burnt out and jaded by reading at the moment and with this book Winterson has very aptly reminded me of my passion for books.  This is a great, strange love story that, I suspect, like Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit would only improve on closer inspection.  More than that, it’s motivated me in to what I think may turn into hours of trawling through holiday websites and, maybe, booking that trip to Venice at long last.

I’ve now moved on to The Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.