SOURCE: Wilson, A. N. “The Narrator that Dare Not Speak Her Name.” Spectator 269 (19 September 1992): 34.

In the following negative review, Wilson criticizes Written on the Body, calling the novel “profoundly embarrassing.”

What a disappointment! Jeannette Winterson is one of the most original and incisive writers at work in England today. Her best book, for my tastes, is Boating for Beginners, a book of which Bulgakov himself might have been proud, and which is wise and hilarious by turns. Her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is justly famous, and The Passion is an extraordinarily inventive, clever, well-written book. Sexing the Cherry, her last novel, was well up to standard, though for some reason I did not enjoy it quite as much as I enjoyed The Passion.

The point is, we are dealing here with a really good, and presumably well-disciplined, writer. How could she have allowed herself...