Throughout the book, Winterson explores many different kinds of ‘passion’. The reader travels with the characters over vast continents and share their thoughts and their passions. The story is written in the first person in both instances which means the reader gets their unique perspectives. At night she dresses as a man and ventures into the seductive world of the Venice casinos.

In the second part, we meet the enigmatic Villanelle who is a Venetian boatman’s daughter. In the first part of the story, we are introduced to Henri, a young man who has left his rural home in France to fight for Napoleon. It is a book made up of four parts and set during the Napoleonic Wars. The Passion doesn’t really lend itself easily to a synopsis but I will try to give you a flavour of what it is about without giving the whole story away. What an absolutely wonderful storyteller. After reading The Castle of Otranto I thought it would have to work hard to be stranger than that!Īnd… The Passion is an unusual book, however having finished it I now want to read everything Jeanette Winterson has ever written.

I think this was partly because I had the impression that it would be quite an ‘odd’ book and I wasn’t quite in the mood for odd books until recently. I actually didn’t read it on holiday (I was a little ambitious with choosing five books to read on a long weekend!), and didn’t get round to reading it until recently. Sarah, of A Devoted Reader recommended Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion to me when I was looking for books to read in Venice (you can find my final choices here).

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson