SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Doña Juana in Love.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (21 February 1993): 3.

In the following review, Eder finds fault with overwritten passages and divergent tonalities in Written on the Body.

“Don Juan falls seriously in love” is a short way to sum up Jeanette Winterson's novel of quick changes and askew effects. [Written on the Body] plays in two registers: a series of wry, near-absurdist seductions, and a lush story of passion in a tragic setting. Each register feeds occasionally into the other. A fierceness once in a while comes through the irony; a note of self-mockery is heard in the passion. Mostly, though, they are so far apart that the readers' attention flutters about for a perch. Cello weeps and fife skirls. Each is arresting—particularly the fife—but a connecting inner line is missing.

Winterson's narrator is her Don Juan or, rather, her Do...