SOURCE: Miner, Valerie. “At Her Wit's End.” Women's Review of Books 10, no. 8 (May 1993): 21.

In the following review, Miner offers a negative assessment of Written on the Body.

Written on the Body is a short, dense novel fueled by intellectual ego and graced with wit. Jeanette Winterson's fourth book (following Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion and Sexing the Cherry) is an ambitious melding of meditation and high drama. Initially her characterization of the narrator promises a subversive portrayal of androgynous passion; ultimately, however, the romance is disappointingly conventional. Written on the Body is less a provocative vision of love than a hectic cerebration about obsession.

The first-person narrator, unidentified by name or gender, is a randy translator of Russian whose avocation is leaping from one London mattress to the next. Louise, a married woman, enters the scene and seduces the protagonist away from her/his current...