Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Why Be Happy?’
There are people who could never commit murder. I am not one of those people. —Jeanette Winterson Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson Grove Press, 230 pp. Novelist Jeanette Winterson’s searing memoir about life with her depressive mother in working-class England breaks the rules that American memoirists live by. By the rules I mean our emphasis on scene. I won’t bash scene—it’s vital for really conveying one’s experience—and usually scene is deepened and balanced with …