Bookworm: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

For many introverts, reading offers a respite from bafflement at their differences from gregarious peers. Here’s Jeanette Winterson’s take on what reading meant growing up in Manchester, England.

Jeanette Winterson’s 2011 memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, is a many-layered exploration of the author’s unusual childhood with a Pentecostal adoptive mother and her attempts to recove…