Today's book shot is inspired by the writer Jeanette Winterson, who wrote a fictional account of her childhood in her first novel Oranges are not the only fruit and later wrote her autobiography Why be happy when you could be normal.
Winterson was adopted as a baby by Pentecostal Evangelists, and despite the painful events of her childhood, has written about it with a mixture of humour, vulnerability, resilience and pragmatism. It's probably a good time for me to re-read it.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with a recent quote she gave when asked about life under lockdown:
"I was brought up in End Time. Mrs Winterson would have loved a plague that stopped the world. We did drills for it – hiding under the stairs with tinned food and a flashlight. As a writer I have also been self-isolating for most of my life. I live backing on to a wood outside of a village. I am used to quiet and I like it."
It comes from a recent newspaper article where different writers were asked about what they were doing during the lockdown:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/03/corona-crisis-tiger-king-lockdown-life-hilary-mantel-simon-armitage-julian-barnes-anne-enright-jeannette-winterson-diane-evans
