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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Review by Leila McKinnon
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? By Jeanette Winterson, Random House. $29.99

At six weeks old, the baby who would become the successful novelist Jeanette Winterson was given up for adoption.

And so started a life story that would inspire the bestselling book and television series Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

Her adopted mother Mrs Winterson was a flamboyant depressive who waited daily for the apocalypse, even embroidering her daughter's school gym bag with the message, "The summer is ended and we are not yet saved".

It was a loveless and difficult childhood, and in this autobiography Winterson examines her search for happiness, belonging, and her biological mother, with humour and depth.

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