THIS IS A NUMBERS GAME 
 According to my Goodreads shelf, I have read 490 novels. If Joyce Carol Oates, Marcel Proust and William Gass have anything to do with it, I'll never make 500. But I want to see that magic number 500 there! I want to be able to say "I have read 500 novels, hear me roar!" So, I'm eating up SHORT novels like a madman right now, never mind the quality, feel the pages! 300? Too long! 250? Still too long! 
 Oranges is short and sweet; really, short and bittersweet. It was drop dead fabulous from page one. Here is how to write a) an autobiographical novel; b) an autobiographical comic novel; c) an autobiographical lesbian comic novel; d) an autobiographical lesbian religious comic novel. Here is rueful sweet-natured working-class English life without the usual accompanying hauteur you get from writers like Zadie Smith and bloody Martin Amis. 
 THERE'S ALWAYS A BUT 
 There are two types of writing here, the flat, banal account of JW's life, which I loved, and the experimental bits , which I hated. E.g. on p155 
 On the banks of the Euphrates find a secret garden cunningly walled. There is an entrance, but the entrance is guarded. There is no way in for you. Inside you will find every plant5 that grows growing circularwise like a target. Close to the heart is a sundial and at the heart is an orange tree. 
 And blah blah blah. All a bit portentously groanworthy. But I think JW thought these were actually the best bits, because her writing took off in that direction (The Passion; Sexing the Cherry); so that puts me in the same situation as people who only like The Clash's first album. 
 LET IT BE ORANGES... NAKED 
 Paul McCartney, scandalized at the overdubbings Phil Spector sloshed over the Beatles' Let It Be album, issued his own de-overdubbed version Let It Be...Naked in 2003. In 2011 JW issued her de-overdubbed version of Oranges called Why be Happy when you Could be Normal? So that will be interesting. 
 I CONTAIN MULTITUDES 
 I only just issued a pronouncement that no one under 30 could write a good novel except Emily Bronte. JW was 24 when she wrote Oranges. But cough cough, this is a memoir, really. The rule still stands. Although wait, that means it can't be counted in my 500 novels. Hmmm...okay, if JW says it's a novel, it's a novel!