Gut Symmetries

By Jeanette Winterson

The highwire artist of the English novel redraws the romantic triangle for the post-Einsteinian universe, where gender is as elastic as matter, and any accurate Grand Unified Theory (GUT) must encompass desire alongside electromagnetism and gravity.

One starry night on a boat in the mid-Atlantic, Alice, a brilliant English theoretical physicist, begins an affair with Jove, her remorselessly seductive American counterpart. But Jove is married. When Alice confronts his wife, Stella, she swiftly falls in love with her, with consequences that are by turns horrifying, comic, and arousing. Vaulting from Liverpool to New York, from alchemy to string theory, and from the spirit to the flesh, Gut Symmetries is a thrillingly original novel by England's most flamboyantly gifted young writer.

"Winterson is unmatched among contemporary writers in her ability to conjure up new-world wonder...A beautiful, stirring and brilliant story."--Times Literary Supplement

"Dazzling for [its] intelligence and inventiveness...[Winterson] is possessed of a masterly command of the language and a truly pliant imagination."--Elle

"One of our most brilliant, visionary storytellers."--San Francisco Chronicle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9780307763631

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959. She read English at Oxford University before writing her first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, which was published in 1985.

Reviews for Gut Symmetries

[kdtb-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My favorite Winterson

[catfantastic_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alice, a young physicist, begins an affair with an older man, Jove, only to fall in love with his wife, Stella. The narrative moves back and forth in time and space, revealing the histories of each of the three lovers - Alice's unfulfilled father and eccentric grandmother, Jove's Italian chef mother, and Stella's German mother and Jewish mystic father. Gut Symmetries weaves together theoretical physics and the complicated passions and yearnings of its protagonists.

[tommcgreevy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found the book difficult. The physics in it was conceptually challenging, and the characters were fairly static. What made the book stand out is the quality of Winterson's writing - series of paragraphs that would stop me in my tracks, forcing me to reread them, and then often again. Would I read it again? Maybe. Would I read more of Winterson? Without a doubt.

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson; L/L, 1997; (1*)My thoughts & comments:I am giving this read 1 star and that is simply for the originality of it. Reading this book, I felt that Winterson was writing for the shock factor & to just write something over-the-top. I can understand the brilliance of the author's mind but not of her writing.My unwanted advice: put it in a textbook. But then again, perhaps I simply prefer a plot-driven novel.

[lottaberling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes the language is so beautiful - I keep some of the sentences like treasures! Winterson sticks to her unique style, and I enjoy it.

[391_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Gut Symmetries" is about love. And physics. And geometry. And the infinite and the finite, and matter and what matters, and particles and monstrosities and life and time and death and the grinning skull in the mirror. It explores a relationship that swallows its own past, the ouroboros of human interaction. It is prods and pokes at the most sensitive underbelly, clinical yet caressing. Winterson seems to wield her pen with remarkable grace in this novel, and despite a few wrong turns she manages to weave together a story out of star dust. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is already familiar with Winterson's works.