Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

“Her family used to go to religious caravan festivals. The scene that remains in my mind is where they’re out in an enormous tent in some field. She’s having to continually abide by this sect, but she’s gay and can’t wait to get out. She is absolutely an alien in her own family, but she’s not relentlessly judging it. I think it’s one of the best semi-autobiographical novels you can get your hands on. It’s absolutely brilliant.” Read more...

The Best Historical Novels Set in the 1980s

Eleanor Anstruther, Novelist

“This is the novelised version of her life that she wrote when she was much younger. Then she wrote the real version as a normal memoir years later, and called it, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? The fact that Jeanette Winterson’s mother threw her out of the house because she was a lesbian, and said terrible things to her like, ‘I adopted the wrong baby, I adopted a bad baby’ – is just a really shockingly cruel way of behaving. But Jeanette Winterson overcame it. Maybe she got, from her mother, some of her strength. Her mother was clearly a very strong person, so she’s got this ambivalence about her.” Read more...

Five Memoirs by Women

Dorothy Byrne, Journalist