Jeanette Winterson is nothing if not self-indulgent, but bear with her as she pares her latest novel to the bare essentials - from the short, stacato-like sentences to the square-like shape of the book itself. She's writing for the e-generation, grappling as ever with the familiar themes of adultery and desire, of reaching for that which is slightly out of reach, yet not giving up on the essential evolutionary process which is art itself - at least, so she has told us a million times.
Nothing is obvious here. While not exactly paying homage to computer gimmickry, she more than acknowledges its existence. Ali is ensconced at a computer terminal, weaving myths by e-mail, slipping in and out of different times, countries, even cyperspace, belonging nowhere, being everywhere, entranced by the metaphysical appeal of eroticism, tempted by becoming someone else.
The narrative is unpredictable, the flow uncertain. But such is life. You either go with it or crumble like a biscuit. "I had planned my afternoon. Chance had changed it. Is chance the snare or what breaks the snare?" Winterson flirts with ideas, even cliches. Ali meets her married lover in Paris by the banks of the Seine, and then again in Capri where "the air was hung with the scent of bougainvillea".
Mostly, though, Winterson is ever the provocative writer. She agitates and commands attention. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was both brilliant and appalling. But her new novel is surprisingly accessible and deceptively simple, celebrating as it does the new freedom to be anonymous, someone else, a slip of a thing behind a mouse. It's slightly funky in style - a bit like your average e-mail.
Mary Moloney is an Irish Times journalist