SOURCE: Sheehan, Aurelie Jane. Review of Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson. Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, no. 3 (fall 1993): 208–09.

In the following positive review, Sheehan compliments Written on the Body, calling it “a joy even in its most serious moments.”

What do you call a woman who sleeps around? Men get to be Casanovas, they're never sluts. The perceived difference could be will vs. submissiveness: either you are in control and seducing the populace—or being used. This definition suggests that a man putting notches in his belt Saturday night after The Literary Event is clear about his motives, while the gal swinging off a lamppost with her bra strap showing is not. Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body debunks this formula with a female narrator who has had a lot of fun in greenhouses, canoes, and (other people's) conjugal beds, and is neither calculating nor clueless about...