Jeanette Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Pandora) is a fast-paced and hilarious coming-of-age story about Jess, who is the adopted daughter of a religious fanatic mother and a totally silent father. Jess grows up helping her mother fight the devil, but when her blossoming sexuality focusses on women, she is ostracized by both the church and her parents. Watching the film, which Winterson also wrote, was like reading a new and improved version of the book: nothing that mattered to me was left out but I noticed things I'd missed the first time around and I came to understand Jess's mother much better. The video version of Jess reminded me of the Anne of Green Gables we'd like to have known. Jess has the same striking red hair and vivid imagination as our Anne, but Jess's teeth aren't perfectly straight and her imaginings usually involve the flames of Hell rather than the flames of romance. Unlike Anne, Jess embraces her sexuality, even though it attracts her to the girl in the next pew rather than the boy next door. Jess's mother gets to be a much more three-dimensional character in the video than she was in the book. Behind the religious fanatic we get a glimpse of someone clinging desperately to a belief that life has a logical and understandable structure. Even her deviant daughter, whom she loves deeply, cannot make her open her eyes to the rich complexities and opportunities of life on earth.