Imagination comes before love for this effortlessly marvellous author
In her latest hard-to-define book, Jeanette Winterson skips over genres in an ode to storytelling.
By Helen Elliott
December 31, 2025 — 5.00am
STORYTELLING
One Aladdin, Two Lamps
Jeanette Winterson
Jonathan Cape, $39.99
Mrs Winterson? Are you there? I’m keen to know what you think of Jeanette’s new book. Your daughter, yes, your only daughter, the one who made you nervy because she never seemed normal. I’m sorry; she’s still not normal. But what can you expect from a child who rewrote the endings of the stories she heard to suit herself? (She’s still at it by the way).
Suiting herself. That’s what Jeanette was always about, wasn’t it? Her method of being in the world just wouldn’t coincide with yours, regardless of wrangling from you or the church. And here you were, adopting her, trying to do The Right Thing. Jeanette never understood what the Right Thing was, did she. Too normal for her!
In her new book about her life, a life which even you, Mrs Winterson, will have to admit, has been exceptional, she extemporises on the idea that we are all shaped by the stories we are told, or see, or read. She starts with the story you told her, Mrs Winterson. She says: This is how the story was supposed to go. Work hard. Do well. And anyone who ever engaged with her would see that such a girl, such an imaginative, sharp girl would do well in whatever she chose.
Except, she adds: But… I am female. I am adopted. I felt more like Aladdin than Andrew Carnegie. A lifetime of hard work would never get me out of here. I was trapped in a story I didn’t want to hear.
Well! Mrs Winterson, I have to tell you that millions of people, mainly women, will be quietly saying Hallelujah to that as they read these words. You could never quite see that your story was not her story, perhaps? Many of these quiet readers might not know that Andrew Carnegie was the Scottish steel magnate who cherished reading so deeply he endowed libraries all over the world. Real man. Fabulous idea. Everyone knows who Aladdin is; he found a lamp, his life was changed and kept changing regardless of whether he wanted it or not. Not a real man. Total fancy and fabrication.
