SOURCE: Bilger, Audrey. “Only Connect.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (13 April 1997): 14.

In the following review, Bilger offers a positive assessment of Gut Symmetries, praising the novel's “beautiful symmetries.”

Gut Symmetries; the title sticks in one's throat, the clipped percussion of the first word clashing with the sibilant wave of its partner. When I first heard the title of Jeanette Winterson's new novel over the phone last fall, I thought I had a bad connection. Unlike Winterson's other titles, which range from the elevated (Art and Lies, Art Objects) to the playful (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Boating for Beginners) to the visceral (Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body), this title poses a challenge. The word gut, its physicality, its vulgarity, the fact that as a verb it means “to disembowel” has a disturbing effect when coupled with a word that indicates balance and order. Before I...