Winterson, a justly celebrated novelist, critic and memoirist, uses all the genres at her disposal to retell some of Scheherazade’s stories, examine them historically and personally, and extract from them lessons about life in the present moment. The result is an often insightful but finally unsuccessful book that falters under its own arguments. It’s a common misstep in these types of works — the instinct, via playful explorations of ancient or classic literature, to inject more into the text than is really there.