beautifully written and surprisingly life-affirming, while also being as strange, sly, and sexed-up as Carter usually tends to be. this story about anbeautifully written and surprisingly life-affirming, while also being as strange, sly, and sexed-up as Carter usually tends to be. this story about an infamous woman with wings and the journalist who falls in love with her is delivered in 3 parts: the first, set in England, recounts her upbringing and the many misadventures of her young life; the second, in St. Petersburg, is mainly focused on the journalist's transformation as he joins a circus starring the object of his fascination, and also explores the lives of several of that circus' performers; the third, in Siberia, has the circus falling apart and somewhat coming together after the troupe is waylaid by a band of outcasts.
this is a slim book but per usual for the author, a dense one. as always, Carter's writing sings. it is a peculiar song, not for everyone. prose of the highest caliber, fantastical in subject matter and ornate in style with numerous scenes playing out as if directed by Fellini or de Sade, always playful even if the joke is a killing one, her stories delivered with a sardonic knowingness that can make the reader wonder if this is all some sort of put-on, and highly aware of how the intersections of gender and class impact all of humanity - especially women of the working class. above all things as an author, Angela Carter is a feminist.
I wonder what that phrase even means anymore to people, this label "feminist author" - is it an automatic turn-off? I know it is for some, as if being considered a feminist author equals a certain stridency, a demeaning of men, a dry and tunnel-visioned perspective devoid of warmth and unable to understand the multiplicity of realities that women and men live in. but the label is still one that does not have to mean any of those things, at least not automatically. a feminist author is a person who understands the challenges that women face in this world, who understands the roles that women are often forced into, who advocates for those women by revealing their challenges and by highlighting the strength of women who live in those roles - and outside of them. especially outside of them. Carter always celebrates the outsider, the malcontent, the women who push back on boundaries. she understands the separatist and she empathizes with the murderess.
there is such a modern sensibility to Carter's feminism. her heroine Sophie Fevvers is bold, brash, and brave, emphatically lower class in outlook and delivery, craving and dropping that money, and always looking out for, supporting, and advocating for other women. she is no great beauty and not one for pretenses, but she carries herself as if she were queen of the world. Carter's story ignores any traditional male-centered narrative device that may be expected: it is the hero who adjusts himself to the heroine's world; it is the heroine and her faithful mother-surrogate who must come to their own rescue, time and again. Carter's brand of feminism embraces both the maudlin and the morbid, sexuality in all of its forms, women in all of their forms, and she highlights all of the struggles and victories, no matter how large or how small. from the grandmother forever bent over a stove to the waif beaten by her lover to the woman who had enough and chopped up her husband to bits. these are all complicated heroines to her, worthy of their own stories. nor is she a misandrist: her men can often be monsters but they can also be caring, kindly, capable of change. Carter's feminism is one that sees the world of women and men from all directions, often through a highly critical lens. and yet, in this novel, she seeks to uplift and not to upbraid. Carter is a feminist who embraces potential.
I was so happy to see that uplift and that potential! she's one of my favorite authors, but her stories are often chilly and sometimes sadistic. they've wowed me with their brilliant prose, hallucinatory imagery, the challenging and norm-breaking ideas on display; they've also disturbed me with their often surreal visions of how brutalized, objectified, and commodified women can be. I was hesitant to dive into a book with an annhilating world view. fortunately, the book was a tonic. in his review, George mentions her story "Puss-in-Boots" from The Bloody Chamber and how excited it made him to read her novels. I was surprised by that story: it had such a light, sunny spirit that it felt like an outlier in her works. I'm so glad I was wrong about that... over time, Angela Carter clearly mellowed, understanding not just the evil in the world, but the kindness as well, the potential for change and for connection. this turned out to be just the book to read to raise the spirits....more
Angela Carter depicts a range of women (and one fluidly-sexed hermaphrodite) striving to be - or just simply being - fully themselves. Sometimes that Angela Carter depicts a range of women (and one fluidly-sexed hermaphrodite) striving to be - or just simply being - fully themselves. Sometimes that self is passionate and loving, other times murderous, animalistic. Sometimes men are important to them, sometimes not so much. These women have little in common with each other, outside of their disinterest in conforming to conventional notions of femininity. Atypical examples of strength. The feminism is not subtext, it's the whole point. But this is not friendly or easy feminism: no saints are in sight.
Mostly fabulous, with some eh. 3.5 stars, rounded up. Even when the stories aren't top notch, the writing always impresses. Favorites are in bold.
"The Fall River Ax Murders" - Lizzie Borden is a woman with problems; she solves those problems with 40 whacks, and then 41 more. This is a portrait of misery: a miserable family, a miserable town. Rather a miserable read as well.
"The Kiss" - The women of Samarkand are a dreamy lot, as was Tamburlaine's wife. This is a slim, elegant trifle. I'm not sure why it needed to be written, but it's quite pleasant.
"Our Lady of the Massacre" - A Lancashire whore finds acceptance and a new life within an Algonquin village. But the English will do as they did: the tribe is massacred, and so a third life must begin. This was a marvelous tale: the redoubtable, no-nonsense heroine was impressive and Carter's portrait of the Indian community was sensitive and real. I wanted this story to go on much longer.
"Peter and the Wolf" - A girl raised by wolves causes different sorts of feelings to arise in a cousin aiming himself towards priesthood. An absorbing tale that ends with a strange epiphany. Carter touches lightly on the natural world vs. the civilized world, sexuality, faith, and how we turn our memories into stories.
"The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" - Carter muses at length on the unconscious influences Poe's actress mother and later his child-bride may have had on him. This is a very meta story and the creativity is often dazzling. Unfortunately, it is all rather... unconvincing.
"Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream" - More musing by Carter, this time on grouchy Oberon, maternal Titania, a surprisingly shaggy, horny Puck, and the unnamed changeling in Shakespeare's play who is at the root of the Oberon-Titania quarrel. The changeling is given an identity here: the Golden Herm, a hermaphrodite, and much of this exceedingly postmodern anti-story is about how the Golden Herm enchants all. This was a fascinating plunge into gender deconstruction. I love how Carter takes ostensibly loveable faerie characters and makes them fearsome, alien. The story also features an enjoyable mini-treatise on the contrast in fairy tales between enchanting English woodland and forbidding German forest.
"The Kitchen Child" - And so life is created in the kitchen of a great English manor: someone has poked the rotund cook while she prepared her lobster soufflé! Nine months later: a child! But who was this secretive poker, who is the kitchen child's father? Perhaps it was the just as rotund visiting Duc who enjoyed not just the soufflé, but its maker... Man oh man, I loved this one! Not since the author's equally cheeky, witty, and life-affirming version of Puss 'n Boots have I smiled so much during one of her stories. Smiles and good cheer from beginning to end. Thank you, Angela Carter!
"Black Venus" - Carter imagines the life of Jeanne Duval, Creole mistress to the transgressive poet Baudelaire, and provides it a refreshingly upbeat albeit still syphilitic ending. This is perhaps the author's most well-known short story. Gender and race collide, a crash made all the more disturbing due to sexuality and colonialism, and because of paternalism, all the more inevitable. Never has a woman calling her man "Daddy" made me twitch more. The author's prose is at its most gorgeously purple and overripe; her points remain carefully aimed and deadly sharp....more
gorgeously written, mind-bending, appalling, cruel, ambiguous, stark, lush, radiant, sepulchral. all of my favorite things! in different combinations,gorgeously written, mind-bending, appalling, cruel, ambiguous, stark, lush, radiant, sepulchral. all of my favorite things! in different combinations, of course. nine stories from one of my favorite writers; all of them interesting, many of them utterly brilliant.
authors can't help but put themselves into their writing, on one level or another. I can't help but wonder how much Carter put of herself into the three stories set in Japan - "A Souvenir of Japan" & "The Smile of Winter" & "Flesh and the Mirror". they detail the troubled romance of an older English woman and a younger Japanese man, the inevitable disintegration of that romance, and its bleak aftermath. there is a lived quality to her descriptions of a lovely small town, an anonymous big city, and a dire beach - as well as an understanding of Japanese culture and character that manages to have complete self-awareness of her status as an outsider who can never really understand: her thoughts on Japan are cuttingly critical, even-handed, and eventually self-abnegating in her realization that true understanding is beyond her. likewise there is an exceedingly personal feeling to the description of this ill-fated romance - the kind of "personal" that is so intimate it can be difficult to read. I'm not sure if all three stories are actually even detailing the same love affair, but there is a distinct (and tragic) continuity. of the three, "A Souvenir of Japan" is perhaps the most breathtaking in its transition from a description of pleasant country life to its bitter deconstruction of the all too fallible qualities of man and woman.
authors also can't help but put their obsessions onto the page; indeed it is often those obsessions that cause a writer to even write. Carter's obsessions are well-known: a fascination with gender and power, the subversion of both of those things, and the violence that can come when they engage with each other. both of those obsessions drive two of the strongest and strangest pieces: "Master" is the horrific tale of a cruel Great White Hunter and the native girl he enslaves - and who in turn becomes an even greater, crueler hunter; "The Loves of Lady Purple" details the horrific life of a fabled whore with a heart of utter darkness, and the literal puppet she has become. the push and pull when gender and power (or the lack of it) meet are also central to the collection's most confused and therefore weakest story - "Elegy for a Freelance" - which takes place in some bleak future London about to burn in riotous flames, and gives a snapshot of an absurd terrorist cell making its first group decision to take its first life - that of its own leader, a deranged and murderous idiot.
Carter is perhaps best known for bizarre, mordant, lusciously written, postmodern fantasias The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, The Passion of New Eve, Nights at the Circus, and The Bloody Chamber (as well as Heroes and Villains, a grim post-apocalyptic anti-romance that deconstructs, wait for it, power and gender). I think fantasia is what she does best and it is certainly what made her one of my favorites. in addition to the previously mentioned "Lady Purple", the collection includes three more and each one provoked very strong reactions from me. I was revolted and depressed by "The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter", which despite being brilliantly written, had an analysis of certain elements of human nature that was so dark (and literally disgusting) that my mind rejected what it was reading and I had to take a long break from the book before moving on. I was wonderfully perplexed and fascinated by the hallucinatory "Reflections", which features a man being forced through a looking-glass into a sort of Reverse World by a villainous, violent young woman and her hermaphrodite guardian; it soon becomes clear that he is perfectly willing to be just as villainous and violent in his attempt to escape. I was enchanted by "Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest", a spellbinding story about an Eden in the heart of a jungle, the darkness that lies beyond a village of happy naturals, a journey into that darkness, and um twincest. because hey, why not? things like a positive depiction of two siblings making love under the Tree of Good and Evil are just par for the course to Carter.
do people really need trigger warnings? if you do, most definitely avoid Angela Carter: you will no doubt be triggered, again and again and again....more
i thought Angela was handing me a flute full of bubbly champagne but it turned out to be a glass of spicy vinegar from a jar of pickled peppers & sausi thought Angela was handing me a flute full of bubbly champagne but it turned out to be a glass of spicy vinegar from a jar of pickled peppers & sausages. Angela, you vicious trickster. still, i found the taste to be surprisingly interesting. maybe not refreshing or pleasing to the taste buds... but interesting! i quickly finished the whole glass.
Love - a title steeped in so much sick irony, given the novel's cruel narrative and its wintry themes - is about an insane young lady, her beau, his demented brother, the apartment that all three share, and how lives just go on no matter what. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, Hey! it is set in late 60s London (i presume - i think the city is nameless) within that special milieu that exists on the outskirts of many colleges - an artsy, ambisexual, insular, young, messy milieu. it stars: a charmless young miss who comes from money & paints surreal landscapes over all of her walls and who is clearly both bonkers and toxic (our heroine!); a perfectly nice young man who is pleasing to the eye and who just wants to be happy and who has an arsenal of disarming smiles and who ties up and beats his girlfriend when she irritates him (our hero!); an animalistic brother who has decided to continually live in his school of hard knocks and who does eventually call for an ambulance after he finds a person who has tried to commit suicide - but not until he takes a few cool snaps (our villain?). the plot is pretty much the detailing of the strange, disturbing dance between the three. what is Love and what is it saying about "love"? honestly, nothing that i want to know. i don't believe in its perspective!
if you love Angela Carter as much as i do, you will find much to enjoy in this novel. her language is as brilliant as ever, full of evilly sardonic non sequitors and stylized dialogue and lots of surprising bits of characterization and of course imagery that is surreal, hyperreal, unreal, and grimily realistic. the writing is so offbeat that at first i thought all the characters and scenarios were meant to be postmodern constructs and a series of dream scenes. but nope, this was actually a "contemporary" novel dealing with actual characters and their relationships. shudder! i lived in a world like this for a few years and thank God it was nothing like Love's Inferno.
i suppose i should say what i think this novel is about so that this "review" is actually a review and not a book report. but i don't wanna. i don't believe in Carter's analysis of love and relationships. too bitter, cynical, demeaning, etc. well she did write this when she was 30 or so and i was probably prey to the same feelings at that age. wasn't i? i don't remember; i probably was taking too many drugs at the time, much like the characters in this book. but even if i don't agree with Carter's vision, her phenomenal and thoroughly idiosyncratic skill at constructing berserk narratives & her use of language that is full of nuance and spikiness & her ability to tell stories that read like diabolical fairy tales are all entirely in place. and so Love is quite enjoyable. a perverse kind of enjoyable, but hey i find my enjoyment in many different kinds of places.
she's beautiful and she looks like she could kill you just because it may be an interesting thing to do. or not, as she may have some gardening to finish up that is even more interesting. ::sigh:: my kind of gal!
my 80s edition of Love contains an amusing afterward by the author. it's not really even an afterward. it is Angela Carter, many years later, showing a bit of affection towards her younger, cynical self, and imagining the eventual destinies of all the novel's surviving characters. the difference between the two Carters is profound. the author of Love wants to turn the world inside out and is high on her own cracked, brilliant malevolence. the author of the afterword is still cracked and brilliant but has replaced that malevolence with a kind of empathy, a kind of kindess, a clear-eyed and unsentimental wisdom. i want to grow up to be that kind of Angela Carter.
my first review of 2013! hopefully not all of my reviews this year will be as long-winded. but the author really deserves me going on a bit. Happy New Year!...more
Carter appreciates pornography, in her own way. I appreciate Carter. I bet she would kick Camille Paglia's ass in a fight.Carter appreciates pornography, in her own way. I appreciate Carter. I bet she would kick Camille Paglia's ass in a fight....more
Perfection! Carter retells classic fairy tales with an emphasis on gender, dreams, sexuality, and death. But wait didn't all of these fairy tales alrePerfection! Carter retells classic fairy tales with an emphasis on gender, dreams, sexuality, and death. But wait didn't all of these fairy tales already emphasize those things? Sure, sure. But Carter makes certain those aspects are front and center in her retelling. The collection is definitely not for kids. The subtext has become the text and that means all of the things between the lines and behind closed doors are naked, on display. All the better to deconstruct you with, said the werewolf to the adventuress, drooling.
I loved how Carter looks at all sides of the fairy tales Beauty and the Beast and Little Red Riding Hood. Two faces of the same coin, three faces of Eve. For Beauty and the Beast: an enchanting tale drenched in light, love, and sweetness ("The Courtship of Mr. Lyon"); a dark and often venomous tale of the fallibility of humanity and how to embrace the changing of shape and nature when life's options are shown to be limited, even pointless ("The Tiger's Bride"). Beast transforms to Man in one; Woman transforms to Beast in another. You say tomato, I say tomahto, either either neither neither, let's call the whole thing off. For Little Red Riding Hood: "The Werewolf"has a vicious and avaricious young lady calling the shots - the werewolf has no chance; "The Company of Wolves" has another young woman embracing her bestial nature within (and the adaptation of this is also one of my favorite films); the hypnotic "Wolf-Alice" twists the story even further, with a feral young lady brought to a vampiric Duke's castle, to discover her true identity, to show the Duke he is not alone in his difference.
The tale of Bluebeard acquires a glorious feminist sheen in its retelling, in the piece that gives the collection its title. A smart new bride; a horrifying new husband; a mother who knows how to use a gun: together they make a compelling set of characters. This lengthy novella starts the collection and is its centerpiece as well. It drips with a morbid, gothic atmosphere and doesn't shy away from the foulness of its villain's deeds. Indeed, it makes sure that twisted, monstrous misogyny is not given even the slightest bit of attractiveness - quite unlike many gothics. And it has such a satisfying ending!
The remainder of the book includes retellings of The Snow Child, Sleeping Beauty, and in "The Erl-King", an eerie, dreamy battle between its heroine and the titular forest god. Sinister, melancholy, hallucinatory, and often creepily romantic. Swoon!
My favorite of the collection is its most straightforward: the cheerful adaptation of Puss in Boots. What a lark! This cheeky, cunning little story features an amoral cast, love at first sight, murder (I suppose), plenty of sex, and talking cats - it's like it was written just for me.
The Bloody Chamber was a rare reread in that I loved it even more the second time around. Carter's prose is gorgeous; her stories both mythic and rife with sexual politics; her themes are those themes that compel me the most in my reading. Revisiting this collection was a bloody delight....more
Loading...
