An awkward read...

Jeanette Winterson's The Powerbook left me with two really profound feelings. First, the relationship that exists throughout the story is really messed up. Second, this novel could have easily been half of its length and still accomplished what it did. The main issues I had with this novel was the way it jumped all over hell and back as it progressed. Additionally, I found the dialogue incredibly difficult to follow at times, catching myself rereading entire pages of dialogue just so I could accurately determine who was speaking, and, even then, I wouldn't be entirely sure. However, I wasn't about to read passages three or four times in an effort to completely understand who the hell was talking in line seven of the dialogue.

The relationship between the narrator, Ali, and her lover is the focus of this novel and as a result is the highlight of reading it. However, it is also the deadest, most beaten horse I have ever seen in literature by the end of the novel. In fact, I would catch my eyes glazing over as I realized that the two women were going to have the exact same conversation that they had in their last encounter. This revisiting was a tactic that I could have handled if something new had been said in at least one or two of these encounters. Instead the damn thing just stagnates until the end of the novel, which I reached with relief, despite my discovery that my drink had run dry several chapters earlier. This stagnation is made even more prevalent by an examination of the ending of the novel, which resolves absolutely nothing, a necessary evil in a piece like this, but no less frustrating.

The previous conversation leads me to my second point, this could have been a super long story and would have succeed much more, in my opinion, than it does in its current state. Much of the background and repetitiveness could be cut without feeling in my opinion, and, as such, would improve the quality of the novel. One thing that I feel was developed with a proper pace was the nature of the narrator's lover's bisexuality. Especially when intertwining this with the massive complication of the other woman being married, the bisexuality is held in the foreground just enough to make it a problem for the characters.

The Powerbook left me wishing I had skimmed through the middle third of the novel. However, it did have its good moments, like the focus of the problematic nature of Ali and her lover's relationship. However, this positive turns into a negative by the third time that one reads about it, due to the fact that it never really changes.