Lives of the Saints by Jeannette Winterson

In "Lives of the Saints" by Jeannette Winterson, there are four intertwining stories of the narrator, the narrator with the woman, the Jews and their pasta machine, and the woman's impregnated affair with her handyman. I believe the narrator of all the stories is one person, who interacted with all these people in his or her world. It could be the story of his or her life, from one decade or life to next, and him processing it beyond death.

The title comes from a quote from Saint Teresa of Ávila, who says, "In the lives of saints I look for confirmation of excess. . .They know there is no passion without pain." I believe she is saying this, because everybody must hurt in order to know joy and every saint has sinned. I wondered if the author was saying that just because someone might sin, that doesn't make them ineligible to be a saint? I believe these stories show a degree of righteousness on all levels and how they can become saints if they repent.

I believe the title is a reference to modern day people being compared to the saints of the past. There are references from the Bible such as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the "desert," "black coats and black hats," and Saint Teresa of Ávila, as examples of saintly figures and locations of stories of the past. I was unfamiliar to most of these people, so I'm glad the footnotes summarized their stories. There is also two references to Leonardo Da Vinci, which I took as symbol for people who view the world and make designs based on it.

I looked at the "we" of the story, as trinity of God, death, and/or guardian angels watching these people, especially since the woman was "oblivious" to the narrator, but slowly began to see and hear more from her obsessed follower. Maybe she wasn't saintly enough to see him at first, but then slowly became righteous. I believe her telling the narrator about her affair is a confession of her sins. As I was reading these stories, they felt like they had familiar resemblances to the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the story of the Virgin Mary. I don't know if the author was trying to emulate those stories or not.

The magic realism in the story is the distance between heaven and earth. There is a dream like quality to these stories, and even the narrator says, "Time is not constant" and "we walked through the hours," making me wonder if time for the narrator moves faster than the living people he interacts with in these stories. The narrator says, "The sun also diminishes the pupils to pinpricks, letting the light in less," making it seem like we are blinded by the light. He or she also says, "When we can hardly see we are most like to fall in love," as if when we are farther from God, we follow our passions.

There are references to "moats," the sky, a "magic kingdom," candles, which makes me think of Gothicism, magic, and fairy tales. The narrator says, "The world itself with roll up like a scroll taking time and space away," making the world seem temporary like a dream. I wondered if the narrator is telling us, we can be a saint or a sinner, but it won't matter anyway once we're dead.