Why be happy when you could be normal?

Jeanette Winterson's bold and revelatory novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. Her internationally best-selling debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, and has become a staple of required reading in contemporary fiction classes. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a "singular and electric" memoir about a life's work to find happiness (The New York Times). It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the universe as a cosmic dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past, rose to haunt the author later in life, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also a book about the power of literature, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, or a life raft that supports us when we are sinking. Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded story of the search for belonging--for love, identity, home, and a mother.

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Jonathan Cape.

1. The wrong crib -- 2. My advice to anybody is: get born -- 3. In the beginning was the word -- 4. Trouble with a book -- 5. At home -- 6. Church -- 7. Accrington -- 8. Apocalypse -- 9. English literature A-Z -- 10. This is the road -- 11. Art and lies -- 11. Intermission -- 12. Night sea voyage -- 13. This appointment takes place in the past -- 14. Strange meeting -- 15. Wound -- 15. Coda.