{"product_id":"0307401243-why_be_happy_when_you_could_be_normal","title":"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?","description":"\n\u003cp\u003eHeartbreaking and funny: the true story behind Jeanette's bestselling and most beloved novel, \u003cb\u003eOranges Are Not the Only Fruit\u003c\/b\u003e.\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, at twenty-five, Jeanette published \u003cb\u003eOranges\u003c\/b\u003e, the story of a girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, supposed to grow up to be a missionary. Instead, she falls in love with a woman. Disaster.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOranges\u003c\/b\u003e became an international bestseller, inspired an award-winning BBC adaptation, and was semi-autobiographical. Mrs. Winterson, a thwarted giantess, loomed over the novel and the author's life: when Jeanette left home at sixteen because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: Why be happy when you could be normal? This is Jeanette's story--acute, fierce, celebratory--of a life's work to find happiness: a search for belonging, love, identity, a home.\u003cbr\u003eAbout a young girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night, and a mother waiting for Armageddon with two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer; about growing up in a northern industrial town; about the Universe as a Cosmic Dustbin. She thought she had written over the painful past until it returned to haunt her and sent her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eCategories:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul class=\"category-tree\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBiographies \u0026amp; Memoirs\u003cul class=\"category-tree\"\u003e\u003cli class=\"category-tree\"\u003eMemoirs\u003c\/li\u003e\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n","brand":"Knopf Canada","offers":[{"title":"Used - Good","offer_id":46773005615294,"sku":"0307401243-4","price":16.47,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0640\/9689\/5166\/files\/51aklukQzUL._SL500.jpg?v=1778167087","url":"https:\/\/shop.sustainablebooks.com\/products\/0307401243-why_be_happy_when_you_could_be_normal","provider":"Sustainable Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}