The easy focus in the novel is the love-triangle plot-line; a husband, wife, and a young lover who falls in love with both. In actuality, their story is minimal, and the three only serve as symbols. Quite quickly, the novel goes into various fields of physics; Relativity, Super String Theory, Quantum Theory, and the Grand Unified Theory, a model of the Universe that sees the three forces -magnetic, strong, weak forces, as one. GUT, is then, the real triangle Winterson writes of. Alice is the magnetic beauty, sought out by both. The husband, the strong force that binds the two women together. The wife is the weak force – and no, that is not a sexist jab; weak forces are responsible for stellar energy production, in other words, it powers the sun. Her, name, of course, is Stella, who has a diamond lodged in her spine.
New York City is the nexus point where their stories collide, the city being a melting pot of all cultures. The novel is really a converging of their different upbringings from different cultures, and of their relationship with their parents; mother-father-child, another triangle. The many inclusions of folklore, myth, and astrological beliefs, alongside the Universal truths through physics and math, are like little breadcrumbs of who they are. I loved the detail of Alice, and her father’s childhood rabbit kept in formaldehyde. Then who helps Alice search for her lost lovers but another story, Captain Ahab and Ishmael. What, really then, is the white whale?
The narrating point of view switches between the three protagonists, and time hops along like the rabbit. The tone and cadence of the different narratives remain the same, along with the dense verse-like-prose, making it rather difficult to keep up with who’s story we are reading and when; but that is precisely the point. Love is the merging of all forces, that bends space and time like gravity – the unmentioned universal force. Winterson fuses our histories, art, science together, suggesting perhaps such convergence of identity is the ultimate Grand Unification Theory we seek.
“Star-dust that we are, will death lose its sting? Theoretically there will be no death, only an exchange of energy into what is likely to be another dimension.”
“You are not my of my clan, not of my kind, there is no biological necessity to want you. Instincts of tribal survival do not apply. I do not want to reproduce myself nor do I need your money. You will not grant me status. You will not make my life easier. Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar. This love suggests there is something beyond self-interest. The geneticists will scoff and snice I cannot prove them wrong anymore than they can prove themselves right, I shall only mention that scoffing is not a very scientific approach.”
“Each speaks a private language and assumes it to be the lingua franca. Sometimes words dock and there is a cheer at port and cargo to unload and such relief that the voyage was worth it. ‘You understand me then?’ ”
JohannaAirth 