by Jeanette Winterson
157 pages, 1987, Grove Press

It’s that time of year again. You know, the one Hallmark invented to sell cards? That’s right, Valentine’s Day, when people show their affection for one another with confections and flowers, while the holiday’s spokesperson, Cupid, supposedly flutters around with his bow poised, hoping to strike love between two lucky people. Right. Because nothing induces romance and makes someone feel all is right with the world like the idea of being skewered with an arrow by an androgynous flying midget in a diaper.

In reality, love isn’t a store-bought creation. Love is more like a fairytale. Not one of those Disney yarns, with singing bluebirds and mice doing the laundry, but a Grimm fairytale, with blood and torment and sometimes a happy ending, sometimes not. That’s a realistic love story. Hell, things even end badly in the book version of “The Princess Bride” (which is every bit as good as the film).

Jeanette Winterson’s “The Passion” is a phenomenal fairy tale. It reads like a bizarre fable told by magical realism master Gabriel Garcia Marquez through the eyes of surrealist painter Dali. Brazen, outlandish and lusty, “The Passion” sweeps through the idea of romance, upending everything in its way.

Winterson starts the book use of the word passion in the very first sentence: “It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock.”  Young French soldier Henri works as a cook in the Napoleonic army. It is his job to help fulfill the Emperor’s need for poultry:

“I started as a neck wringer and before long I was the one who carried the platter through inches of mud to his tent. He likes me because I am short. I flatter myself. He did not dislike me. He liked no one except Josephine and he liked her the way he liked chicken.”

Henri’s position with the army takes him to Russia, home of Napoleon’s infamous downturn in the war. It is here that Henri meets Villanelle, a cross-dressing Venetian prostitute sold to the French army by her despicable husband. The daughter of a Venetian boatman, Villanelle has webbed feet, which give her the ability to walk on water. No biggie. Henri is wholly captivated by her, but Villanelle cannot love him back, as her heart belongs to another. Literally. Villanelle’s heart has been imprisoned in a jar in the home of the noblewoman who she desperately loves. As more and more soldiers starve and fall ill, Henri decides to desert the army and his once-beloved emperor. He flees, taking Villanelle and his friend, Patrick, a defrocked priest. The trio strike out across Europe for their homes, sharing their life stories along the way.

Says Villanelle: “I have always been a gambler. It’s a skill that comes naturally to me like thieving and loving. What I didn’t know by instinct I picked up from working the Casino, from watching others play and learning what it is that people value and therefore what it is they will risk. I learned how to put a challenge in such a way as to make it irresistible. We gamble with the hope of winning. But it’s the thought of what we might lose that excites us.”

The first section of the book, called “The Emperor,” is narrated by Henri, who is humorous in his storytelling and sweet in his love for Villanelle. The second section, “The Queen of Spades,” is narrated by Villanelle and is more mystical as she recounts her web-footed childhood, her life on the canals in Venice, her work as a pickpocket in the casinos and her love for the noblewoman.

“In the Casino that night I tried to decide what to do. She thought I was a young man. I was not. Should I go to see her as myself and joke about the mistake and leave gracefully? My heart shrivelled at the thought. To lose her again so soon. And what was myself? Was this breeches and boots self any less real than my garters? What was it about me that interested her?
You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play.”

The third part of the book, “The Zero Winter,” is told by both Henri and Villanelle, and the fourth section, “The Rock,” is again narrated by Villanelle.

“The Passion” resonates with ache. It’s like a paper cut to the heart: Henri’s longing for Villanelle, her longing for the noblewoman and her heart, the entire world’s desire to find the thing that makes them happy, whether it’s accepted or not. Winterson loves her characters and beautifully describes their exquisite pleasures and torments, as they try and accept the hands they were dealt. Henri struggles to win Villanelle even as she fights to regain her heart and escape her wretched husband. Says Henri of his passion for Villanelle: “... even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.”

That we never truly get what we want—now that is a realistic fairy tale.  Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day ... suckers.