Wednesday, June 20, 2001
Title: The PowerBook
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Vintage
I think it is probably fair to say that The PowerBook is not quite what I expected. The description and first few pages caught my interest making it sound like it was a story about the exploration of identity and someone who offered the opportunity to step out of one identity into another. Which to a degree it is; the main character Ali offering others "freedom for one night". However the shop she runs and the online extension of that are barely touched, being more of a subtext and inference. Rather this is the story of how weaving new identities and stories for customers can end up affecting the author as much as the character.
As usual Ali is emailed by a customer looking for that one night's freedom, but when the two women meet in Paris and end up having sex together things have changed. This builds up so that the core of the story is the affair between these two women, the lonely storyteller and the married mystery woman. Through this the storyteller weaves tales, most of them building up to climaxes of tragic love. These retellings and attempts to rewrite intersperse the progress of what is supposed to be real.
On that basis the book would probably not be anything special. But the way in which it is written works well, split into short chapters, each started with an icon imitating a computer activity and relevant to the words that follow. At the same time the way that the author explores the ideas of narrative as she unfolds her narrative is interesting, leading to some memorable lines. Overall a curious book, that is a pretty quick and reasonably enjoyable read.
RVWR: PTR
June 2001
