After reading Jeanette Wintersons 'Sexing The Cherry' I have to say I wasn't impressed! I couldn't help but form the impression that the author was using the medium to serve as a platform for their embittered opinions of the male sex. In short, the book came across as an unashamedly vicious sexist attack and the fragmented narrative seems to be employed primarily to facilitate this extended attack, allowing the author to jump from one debauched scenario to another without the annoying hassle of having to develop any character beyond caricature or any plot beyond man is evil and Woman is his superior.

This book could be used as the flagship example of feminism gone very very wrong! Just two examples - Dog woman (the heroine), decapitates a man. the narrative describes the men of the surrounding areas as flocking to the scene like rabid animals to rape the corpse and decapitated head! The author portrays all the male characters as morally corrupt in some way or other of course. The author sometimes tries to veil these attacks against the male sex with a flaccid attempt at humour, at one point having her main character bite a dirty little mans penis off. I wondered at this point if anyone in literary circles would have dared describe the passage as humorous if it had been making reference to some 'slut' having her genitalia mutilated?

The author seems to be seeking to illicit a sense that all men are imbued with an evil depraved nature and she utilizes narrative techniques such as analepsis and prolepsis to illustrate regurgitated concepts of the fluidity of time and space, borne from more forward-thinking minds than her own to (supposedly) lend her rantings some credibility.

I fail to see how the author can be lauded as some kind of literary genius, if this book had been written by a man, the male characters were to be made female and the heroine to be renamed dog-man, the writer would have been branded a sadistic misogynist.

Discussing this book with female classmates has proved a revelation as I was repeatedly told how it had not even occurred to them that this book might prove to be highly offensive to the men in the class, there had been no consideration of it whatsoever!

It is shocking that in an era of supposed sexual revolution and enlightenment that this authors bitter diatribe should not only go unchallenged but should be so lauded by so many, My advice, avoid this book like you would avoid a BNP party political broadcast.