Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 9,453 ratings · 771 reviews

From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss-in-Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires, werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.

"Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality." (Ian McEwan )

"She can glide from ancient to modern, from darkness to luminosity, from depravity to comedy with...more

Paperback, 126 pages

Published January 1st 1990 by Penguin Books (first published 1979)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Best Fairytales and Retellings

38th out of 926 books — 5,293 voters

Best Gothic Books Of All Time

32nd out of 277 books — 1,271 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jan 27, 2010 Ceridwen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ghost-stories, gothic, grrrrl-power, necrophilia, rule-britannia, baying-at-the-moon, short-shories, incest-is-best, pomo-a-go-go

Yesterday, I had a birthday party for my Christmas-born daughter. She received an embarrassment of princess accoutrement: crowns, jewels, plastic sparkle shoes, dolls, et&c and whathaveyou. Last week, when I picked her up from my dad's house, she and my step-mom, Chris, were snuggled together on the couch, watching Disney's “Beauty and the Beast”. It was the end of the movie when I came in, right before the transformation, and Chris put up her hand, apologized, and said she couldn't talk unt...more Yesterday, I had a birthday party for my Christmas-born daughter. She received an embarrassment of princess accoutrement: crowns, jewels, plastic sparkle shoes, dolls, et&c and whathaveyou. Last week, when I picked her up from my dad's house, she and my step-mom, Chris, were snuggled together on the couch, watching Disney's “Beauty and the Beast”. It was the end of the movie when I came in, right before the transformation, and Chris put up her hand, apologized, and said she couldn't talk until the inevitable magic had been transacted. We watched: monster into man, teapot into Angela Lansbury. Chris flicked her fingers under her eyes in the way that means “I'm not crying” but she was. One of the girl's gifts yesterday was a Belle doll. Another was a sparkle pony with a hair brush. The girl took the brush from the horse and combed the princess's hair. After work today, I took out the over-sized Disney Princess activity book we received yesterday. We found the page with Belle and the Beast, and first thing, she blacked out all the eyes. This may sound creepy, and it is I guess, but this is the first thing most kids her age will do. I took down this book and began reading.

An antidote, but not exactly. The Bloody Chamberis the kind of collection that gets described as a “feminist reimagining”, which is accurate on some levels, but I think can imply that Carter is enacting a series of simple reversals: women as aggressors, boys locked in towers. There are reversals, but not the ones you expect or for which you have prepared. They have a sameness to them that doesn't lend to the gulping down I did, yet again, but it works, in its own way. I started with the stories that deal with Beauty & her Beast, as they were foremost on my mind: “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” and “The Tiger's Bride”. This is not a collection that is a novel in disguise; they are short stories whole and complete. This is more like an album, in a sense that will most likely be lost sometime soon: a collection of pieces that riff on a theme. The Lyon tale is almost traditional in its telling: the father, the rose, the pact with the beast, the forgetting and return, the transformation that has you flicking your eyes with all of the wish-fulfillment, bright and romantic. But then comes “The Tiger Bride”, which inverts a central metaphor disturbingly, rising to a climax that made all of my hair stand on end. I don't mean this metaphorically – even knowing the end, which I did, my body responded with the uncanny mammalian reaction that can mean several things at once: fear, pleasure, pain. Ah. Oh God. I am covered in fur.

There's something hot-house about the prose. It's fragile, breakable, spun from glass. It's intentionally unreal, like Rappaccini's Daughter who was raised on poison; beautiful, deadly. These are not stories that aspire to airless heroic beauty – although you many gasp from the lace and blood and satin – they also have a earthy, almost obscene sensibility. “The Snow Child” is a dagger of a tale, epigrammatic. It strips the fairy tale down to its Oedipal basics, almost strips out the story from the story, and you're left with blood on snow and a rended black wing.

I think one of the failures of many modern fairy tales is that they take place in la-la land, long ago and far away, in the faux-medieval forest. With notable exceptions, such as “The Werewolf”, Carter's stories occur in identifiable times and places. “The Lady of the House of Love” – simply one of my favorite short stories EVER – interrogates Progress and Rationalism & investigates horror in the age of the machine gun. In the year before the first world war, a young Englishman – a rational virgin – peddles into a Romanian town filled with ghosts and the last, inbred vampire daughter of Nosferatu. About his bicycle:

“To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion...Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man's welfare and nothing at all to its bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm?” (p97)

Maybe you can see where this is going. The vampire speaks to personal, domestic fears, and how those fears intersect with larger, societal moralities. (Ftw, Stephanie Meyer.) The vampire is also the symbol of the aristocracy: inbred, parasitic, but with a strange intimacy. The boy rides in on his bicycle, and only sees the vampire in the most rational terms: what wonders a sanatorium will do! And the boy, well-meaning, blind, & sweet as he is, doesn't realize that his bike is the symbol of the devastation to come, that the greatest force for democracy has been the machine gun. We ceased to fear the aristocrat when we realized he could only kill us one at a time, family by family; we could kill each other so much faster and more efficiently once decadent individualism was subsumed into a machine. The vampire may be inhuman, but inhumanity has finer gradations like anything else, and the trenches are a scarier monster altogether, or scary precisely because they aren't a monster.

There's more going on in this story, much more, but that's what I've got for now. I mentioned one of Carter's wolf stories, three of which end the book. A scant two pages long, “The Werewolf” is a mastery of narrative voice: Carter creates a place, then she relates a folklore, then she tells a story in that folklore. The story is about girls and crones, the old woman stripped and stoned to death, the young woman who prospers from a folklore that will turn her out once she crosses the dangerous boundary into age. “The Company of Wolves” doesn't work as well as the other two. Carter falls into lecturing for the first half, but by the end has worked into glorious perversity: Grandma's bones wrapped in her own clothes, her hair unburned in the fireplace layered over with the girl's discarded, burning clothes, the girl and the wolf in a house surrounded by baying wolves, consummating and consuming. In the 80s, Neil Jordan & Angela Carter turned these wolf stories into a movie, which is a fiasco. Cheesy sets, a poorly done framing device, almost perversely miscast: Angela Lansbury (again!) is the wrong kind of old woman for Carter's tales; Stephen Rea is cool, but he makes a really shitty huntsman/wolf. But I can see why they did it; Carter's stories have a concreteness to them, a vision.

As often as these stories get soaked in bleach by Disney and repackaged for sale, the fairy tales themselves have an essential danger that can't be scrubbed out. You can wash the blood off the floor, but it catches inevitably in the drain. (As a side-note, I think this is why Disney's “The Princess and the Frog” doesn't work & mostly bored my kids: they strayed waaaaaay too far from the central motifs. No spoiled princess, no pact that ends with the girl having to share her bed with a reptile, no violence integral to the story – in many versions, the frog becomes a man after the girl has thrown him against the wall in disgust and anger. There was violence in the Disney movie, but it was parenthetical, and banter is a poor substitute for real conflict.) Fairy tales also get re-purposed by children, with no parental intervention: Beauty's eyes blacked out, doll and beast submitting to the same brushing. Carter's stories aren't definitive, but then no fairy story is, related from mouth to mouth, like a kiss or contagion, the kind of thing thing that raises the hair on your arms even while you snuggle in the intimacy of motherhood. Sweet dreams, kids.

(Cross-posted on Readerling.)(less)

56 likes · like · see review

Dec 06, 2008 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Elizabeth by: everyone

Shelves: 2008, in-by-of-england, vamps-and-other-mythical-beasts, reviewed, fey

Angela Carter staggers me. I wish I could write fairy tales like this. I wish I could write like this. She makes me feel inept for being able to only express thoughts on paper (or on a server) with some competence and not be able to make them dance, sing, weave mists of smoke around a shrinking figure until she is wrapped in a cloak of palest white and obscured from sight. Seriously. She makes me want to quit my job, sit in front of the computer from now until they cut the electric, and try to...more

30 likes · like · see review

Apr 19, 2013 Aubrey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reality-check, on-hand, prose-prose-prose, bedtime-stories, 5-star, reviewed

There's the indulgence of the mind, and there's the pleasure of the senses. One can fill oneself up on the former to the brim, hold firmly to one's breast its lack of ignorance, its sophisticated patterns of thought, its know-how translating into a delightful net of endless know-whens and know-whats and whatever know-wherefore's your precious neurons may desire. There's a unique satisfaction to be had in those sorts of theoretical acrobatics, that complex weave of states of mind that are fully a...more There's the indulgence of the mind, and there's the pleasure of the senses. One can fill oneself up on the former to the brim, hold firmly to one's breast its lack of ignorance, its sophisticated patterns of thought, its know-how translating into a delightful net of endless know-whens and know-whats and whatever know-wherefore's your precious neurons may desire. There's a unique satisfaction to be had in those sorts of theoretical acrobatics, that complex weave of states of mind that are fully aware and fairly smug about their enlightened existence. But my god, there's also something to be said for the sensual things in life. Revel all you want in the theory of evolution, but don't forget to take advantage of what this millenia long build up of exquisite physicality has gifted you with.

A simple thing to do, that last part, wouldn't you think? This book certainly had no trouble with spilling out in a languorously lurid display its myriad charms and carnal glory, many if not all of the stories focused on the well earned pleasures of females taking charge of their own. And yet, look at the society of today, a heterosexually dominated rape culture complete with the most hypocritical set of double standards to ever exist, where every boy is a Casanova and every girl is either an easy slut or a virginal saint. Never both. That's a physical impossibility, didn't you know, since the very word 'virginity' implies that a cock has the power to change the inherent dichotomy of whatever it fucks. Boys can be virgins too, but the lack of it never seemed to compromise their intrinsic value in the history of cultures worldwide. Quite the opposite, in fact. And on the other hand, you get the dowry. Unicorns. Virginal white caked in contextual definitions of simpering innocence and shining perfection, ideological imperatives that soak the fairy tales choked down at the cradle and continue forever on in trash à la Fifty Shades of Gray.

Spare me this puritanical rot seeping into society, enough to make a biological imperative a sin in some situations and a shameful state in all cases female. Deliver me from erotica that claims to pander to anything besides the patriarchy, and is subsumed by it all the more. Give me a heady mix of whirling words that seduce the senses without sacrificing the self on an altar of supreme obedience and abused devotion, offering pleasure with no sense of whatever guilt the world attempts to infuse it with. Keep your knights in shining armor who think the nub between their legs makes them a god over everything that lacks it. I'll take the man who sees the woman as an equal in all things in the bedroom and without, the woman who will kiss you if you treat her right and spill your throat out in a righteous flow if you treat her otherwise.

You have your body. You have your dignity. You know that others have these, and that you must respect them. You don't need anything else.(less)

19 likes · like · see review

Mar 13, 2010 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

Hey there Little Red Riding Hood,
You sure are looking good.
You’re everything a big bad wolf could want.
Listen to me…
I don’t think little big girls should
Go walking in these spooky old woods alone.
—Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, 1962

In The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s uses a decidedly feminist slant to re-tell familiar myths and stories. “The Company of Wolves,” for example, provides a point-by-point rebuttal of the myths embedded in the more modern versions of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Interestingly, the earliest versions of the fairy tale were primarily oral and far more risqué. These versions included sexual elements such as the wolf (actually a “werewolf” in the oldest versions) telling Red Riding Hood to throw her clothes, one by one, into a fire (Leeming and Sader 391). Further—in these early versions—Red Riding Hood tricks the wolf by pretending that she needs to go outside to relieve herself. Once outside, Red Riding Hood quickly removes the rope attached to her, ties it to a tree, and escapes (Bushi). In these original versions, Red Riding Hood outwits the fox, and the sexual overtones are explicit.

By the time Charles Perrault wrote his version in 1697, the story had been sanitized into a lesson on young girls’ morality. In Perrault’s version, the story serves to warn young girls about the threat men pose to their sexual innocence, but does not include the mother’s warning to “stay on the path,” that appears in most later versions (such as that of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm in 1812). Instead, Perrault ends his tale with an overt moral warning: Young ladies—in particular, well-bred and attractive young ladies—should not be beguiled by men’s wolfish charm (3). Jacob and Wilhelm Grimms’ version [originally called “Little Red-Cap”:], far more familiar to American and English audiences than that of Perrault, casts Little Red Riding Hood as a younger girl (i.e., even more vulnerable) and begins with the famous warning: “[W:]alk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path.” Predictably, Little Red Riding Hood forgets her mother’s warning, strays off the path, and gets “deeper and deeper into the wood.” Once in the woods, Little Red Riding Hood’s troubles begin. Ultimately, a hunter, who just happens to be passing by, saves her.

Of most significance is the decided shift the fairy tale has undergone through time. In the original versions, Little Red Riding Hood saves herself and is never gulled by the wolf. In versions dating from the seventeenth century onward, the girl strays from the path, actually believes the wolf might really be granny, and is saved by a huntsman. Further, in the Grimms’ version and its modern variations, Red Riding Hood’s comment at the end of the story demonstrates that she has learned her lesson: “As long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.” However, the fairy tale’s other messages to young women are more embedded and more destructive: We are easily distracted and disobedient; we are not safe alone in the woods (traveling off the beaten path); we are fairly stupid; we get ourselves in trouble; and we need to be rescued by a man.

In contrast, Angela Carter’s short story, “The Company of Wolves,” restores the tale’s original elements—such as the overt sexuality and a heroine who is resourceful rather than helpless—but adds a feminist perspective. Carter’s heroine is “strong-minded,” packs a carving knife in her basket of goodies, and is powerful because of her virginity:

“She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space…she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver. She has her knife and she is afraid of nothing.”

Further, in Carter’s version, Red Riding Hood does not just protect herself, but controls the “game.” The seduction scene plays out like a modern slasher movie. As the girl—at the wolf’s bidding—removes each item of clothing and ostensibly becomes more and more vulnerable, we begin to see her as a victim. Just as we become lulled by the predictable script in motion, the girl, now completely naked, responds to the wolf’s threat, “All the better to eat you with,” by bursting into laughter: “[S:]he knew she was nobody’s meat.” Even given the background Carter provides in the story’s beginning, the scene startles. We knew the girl was strong, independent, and armed. However, the pattern of woman-alone-traveling-alone-helpless-alone-victim is so embedded in our consciousness that we are caught off-guard.

And, that is precisely Carter’s point.

Adapted from a prior publication

(less)

35 likes · like · see review

Jul 01, 2009 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: adults, women comfortable with their sexuality

Shelves: brit-lit, fantasy-and-scifi, fiction, po-mo, goth-goth-baby, owned, grand-opera

"The Marquis stood transfixed, utterly dazed, at a loss. It must have been as if he had been watching his beloved Tristan for the twelfth, thirteenth time and Tristan stirred, then leapt from his bier in the last act, announce in a januty aria interposed from Verdi that bygones were bygones, crying over spilt milk did nobody any good and, as for himself, he proposed to live happily ever after. The puppet master, open mouthed, wide eyed, impotent at the last, saw his dolls break free of their str...more "The Marquis stood transfixed, utterly dazed, at a loss. It must have been as if he had been watching his beloved Tristan for the twelfth, thirteenth time and Tristan stirred, then leapt from his bier in the last act, announce in a januty aria interposed from Verdi that bygones were bygones, crying over spilt milk did nobody any good and, as for himself, he proposed to live happily ever after. The puppet master, open mouthed, wide eyed, impotent at the last, saw his dolls break free of their strings, abandon the rituals that he had ordained for them since he began and start to live for themselves; the king, aghast, witnesses the revolt of his pawns."

If there is a "mission statement" in this collection of stories by Angela Carter, this is its most clearly crafted iteration.

These stories are told as a particularly erudite fairy might, whispering into your head and dancing through your waking and unconscious dreams, pulling out impressions that half given, now entirely created. These stories make one smile to realize once again how porn is for emotional children, and these stories are for adults, who can are prepared to realize the full possibilities of their sexuality, both in the literal sexual sense, and in the figurative sense of gender-related identity, both male and female, though the pieces ostensibly speak to female identity. And then brought back to earth with the impish, shocking voice of a Puck, who reminds us that these tales are very firmly a part of our deliciously dirty, vulgarly presented reality.

These stories will be familiar to adults, but only in the most basic sense. The title story is a retelling of Bluebeard, "The Courtship of Mr Lyon," a modern Beauty and the Beast, "The Lady in the House of Love," a creepily morbid Sleeping Beauty, several recreations of Little Red Riding Hood, etc. They are meant to be familiar, they are meant to lull one into a smug sense of knowing, and then slowly, subtly take each piece of that feeling of comfort away. My particular favorites are the title story, "The Bloody Chamber," and the end of the cycle, "Wolf-Alice". The Bloody Chamber's indignant statement on a woman's place in fairy tales is very well taken. It makes the point that Bluebeard picked a woman he obviously knew was curious, made the point of making the "don't press the red button" argument, and set her up to fail, in order that he could watch Eve Falling and Falling again for some kind of personal, perverse security in his own masculine identity. She is punished for the nature that she was born with, for simply being in the world. The above stated quote comes towards the end of the tale, as the sacrificial Eve and her companions take control of their inexorable fate. "Wolf Alice," is a beautifully, wonderfully sad statement on what it means to be a woman. It describes a little girl raised by wolves, who grows up with absolutely no knowledge of female identity, much less "human" identity. (She believes her "menses," are a spell cast by the full moon as it shines down upon her, for example, and why not?) It shows just how socialized the supposed identity of "woman," is, and just what women may be capable of doing if they have no idea what it is they are supposed to be, as well as reminding us again and again how little seperates us from the carnivorous beasts of the forest.

Each story has its own message to give, or ambiguous impression to leave (not all of them are meant for words), beyond the obvious feminist power statements. I would highly recommend this trip to a world that, for all we know, is a much closer part of ours thatn we know.(less)

18 likes · like · see review

Jul 23, 2008 Martine rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lovers of gothic fiction

Shelves: british, film, modern-fiction, fairy-tales, short-stories, gothic, magic-realism

Wow. That was my response after reading just a few pages of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter's amazing collection of re-imagined fairy tales. Carter has a way with words that pulls you right into her stories, seducing you, intoxicating you. And the stories themselves are pretty impressive, too. Carter has a superb imagination and ambition to match, leading her not just to modernising famous fairy tales, but to feminising them, eroticising them and giving them a dark and primordial slant. The re...more Wow. That was my response after reading just a few pages of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter's amazing collection of re-imagined fairy tales. Carter has a way with words that pulls you right into her stories, seducing you, intoxicating you. And the stories themselves are pretty impressive, too. Carter has a superb imagination and ambition to match, leading her not just to modernising famous fairy tales, but to feminising them, eroticising them and giving them a dark and primordial slant. The result is a pretty heady mix of ingénues, beasts, vampires, werewolves and feral children who discover things they never did in the story books you have at home, but which make perfect sense in the strange, highly atmospheric universe Carter creates here. You may never read your fairy-tale books in the same way again after reading this collection, but then again, perhaps you weren't meant to read them that way, anyway. Who is to say what is the definitive version of a fairy tale?

To be sure, the quality of the stories in The Bloody Chamber is uneven. There are a few stories in there which are so obscure they had me going 'huh?', but even in their obscurity they were seriously beautiful and evocative. I genuinely enjoyed being immersed in the delirious bath of feelings and impressions Carter poured me, and I honestly look forward to taking the plunge again at some point to see if I can make more sense of these stories then. That's how good a writer Carter is -- even at her most obscure she seduces you and has you coming back for more.

Meanwhile, the good stories in The Bloody Chamber are very good indeed. My favourite would have to be 'Puss-in-Boots'. The most straightforward story in the collection, it's a delightfully brazen retelling of the fairy tale of the same name, in which Puss proudly relates his efforts to get his master to bed the lady of his dreams. Other superb stories in the collection include 'The Bloody Chamber' (a very erotic retelling of the old Bluebeard story), 'The Lady of the House of Love' (a marvellously gothic retelling of the Snow White tale in which Snow White herself has been recast as... a vampire), and 'The Company of Wolves', in which Little Red Riding Hood saves her own life by sleeping with the wolf. Well, wouldn't you?

As you can probably tell from the above, sex is an important theme in The Bloody Chamber. Many of the stories are about sexual awakening; many of them feature girls who are only just beginning to discover the sensual life, usually at the hands of pretty brutish men/monsters. Sound gruesome? It's not. 'Sensual' is the word to describe these stories -- sensual, seductive, luscious and erotic. And yes, some of them are also quite dark, gothic and morbid, but always beautifully and seductively so.

I could go on to writing an essay about Carter's stunning (and occasionally startling) imagery, or about the way she desanitises old tales and gives them a feminist twist, but I think I've said enough here. The bottom line is that this is good stuff and that you should all read it. Personally, I can't wait to read what else Carter has written. She seems quite a discovery.(less)

8 likes · like · see review

May 24, 2013 Nenia Campbell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: x-1970s, i-collect-short-stories, bestiality, dark-like-my-soul, disturbing, faerie-tales-twice-retold, fantasy, gothic, icky-things-going-on-here, rape-n-violence, trainwreck-i-have-watched-and-loved, wtf, feminism-but-not-really

My favorite short story in this anthology was probably "The Bloody Chamber," a modernization of Bluebeard. If you aren't familiar with this fairytale then I won't spoil it for you, but if you are, then you'll be pleased to know that Angela Carter stays true to the timeless, sinister foreshadowing of the original, even while bringing it up to date. Her descriptions have a poetic ethereal quality that flows like water, and her characterization is quite good. Fairytale characters tend to be fairly...more My favorite short story in this anthology was probably "The Bloody Chamber," a modernization of Bluebeard. If you aren't familiar with this fairytale then I won't spoil it for you, but if you are, then you'll be pleased to know that Angela Carter stays true to the timeless, sinister foreshadowing of the original, even while bringing it up to date. Her descriptions have a poetic ethereal quality that flows like water, and her characterization is quite good. Fairytale characters tend to be fairly one dimensional and she does a good job fleshing them out.

The Tiger's Bride and the Courtship of Mr. Lyon were also quite good, both being renditions of Beauty and the Beast (Mr. Lyon was the better of the two). It's interesting to see men being portrayed as beasts, particularly in a more modern setting that we like to think of as being "civilized." I actually think that the modern settings MAKE these stories far more sinister because we no longer have the excuse of archaic, barbaric practices as the basis for the creepiness.

The others were far less memorable. There was one about the Elf King (Erlkonig) which was very odd, although you might like it if you're partial to the movie Labyrinth and the various fanfictions thereof. There were also some stories about vampires and werewolves, and one that was a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood and another of Puss in Boots. Carter began to lose steam towards the end, and I grew less interested, so I don't remember as many details about these stories. I feel like the later ones had more gratuitous sex than the earlier ones, and were far more reminiscent of some of Anne Rice's worst novels than a decent reinterpretation of the Brothers' Grimm--particularly the vampire/were ones.

All in all, though, this was a pretty good collection. I finished it in a few hours, and the first story alone makes it worth the read (if they had all been up to THAT caliber, this would be a five-star review, instead of a four-star review). Definitely worth a look if you love fairytales and gothic horror.(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Sep 24, 2012 Katya rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As I read the reviews of this book, I came to the following conclusion - in popular YA books, girls aren't going after Prince Charming, but Bluebeard, and there was no better example for this than "The Bloody Chamber", the first story in this anthology.

Think about it - a man, with several complexes, probably impotent or in possession of some weird blood fetish, purposedly chooses a wife that is both curious and insecure. He presents her with a key, telling her not to go into the room, fully know...more As I read the reviews of this book, I came to the following conclusion - in popular YA books, girls aren't going after Prince Charming, but Bluebeard, and there was no better example for this than "The Bloody Chamber", the first story in this anthology.

Think about it - a man, with several complexes, probably impotent or in possession of some weird blood fetish, purposedly chooses a wife that is both curious and insecure. He presents her with a key, telling her not to go into the room, fully knowing that she would disobey, and then prepares to murder her because she went down the path of ruin he himself placed her on. By doing so, he restores his sense of superiority and for a while, his complexes are quelched. Try to put this theory to Edward Cullen, Daniel Grigori and Damen Auguste and tell me if you see the similarities - why do they choose a weak, insecure girl, starving for attention and understanding, if not to make themselves feel better?

This is not a book that you can understand in one sitting. You can read these stories again and again and find a new meaning to them. Also, please note that those aren't the stories sugar-coated to be made fit for mass consumption. Angela Carter writes her stories in the spirit of the original Grimm fairytales - real, raw, full of dark melancholy and, even at times, saucy adult humor. The focus is on the woman, even in Puss-in-boots, where the tom finds an ally in the face of an ingenious tabby.

The language in Carter's books has always been a delight, and in "The Bloody Chamber", she doesn't disappoint. The sentences are sophisticated, but elegant, and in no time do they sound even remotely clumsy. The story flows easily, and it could appeal both to someone who is studying it for purely academic purposes and to someone reading it just for fun. You'll find yourself easily lost in the imagery and might even feel the urge to paint the sentences on your walls. I already posted a snippet from "Puss-in-boots" on my blog, so now here are a few lines from "The Lady of the House of Love":

She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity, for none of her features exhibit any of those touching imperfections that reconcile us to the imperfection of the human condition. Her beauty is a simptom of her disorder, of her soullessness.

This is not a book you can pick up, expecting a light, unengaging read. This is a book that will shake you, set your mind on fire and things will never be the same. I loved it.

For this review and more, come over at The Book Lantern. (less)

8 likes · like · see review

Jun 11, 2009 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chicks-dig-it, slipstream-sf-fantasy

This is why I love reading many books at the same time. I have just finished "The Erkling" from Ms. Carter. She mentions that the creature "makes salads of the dandelions that he calls rude names, 'bum pipes' or 'piss the beds,' and flavors them with a few leaves of the wild strawberry, but he will not touch the brambles; he says the Devil spits on them at Michaelmas."

I would have totally missed this, but thanks to reading Pinker's language book in tandem, I understand: "'The days when the dande...more

9 likes · like · see review

Dec 10, 2011 Bill Kerwin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: gothic, weird-fiction

Angela Carter reveals the dark heart of the fairy story in these memorably quirky versions. She is able to intensify the mythic core of each of these tales, not by stripping them down to their essentials (the obvious way) but by using eccentric, illuminative detail expressed in individualistic prose. Although these versions could be described as feminist and anti-patriarchal, such labels are too limiting for the fierce independence of Carter's intelligence. She is a writer who never shrinks from...more

6 likes · like · see review

Dec 06, 2012 Renae M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Renae by: Emily

Shelves: read-in-2012, fairytales-and-retellings, fantasy, gothic, magical-realism, literary-fiction, short-fiction, books-i-own

Mini Review:

These are not fairy tales for children or for those in search of sweet romance. In this collection of 10 short stories, Angela Carter writes of topics such as bestiality, necrophilia, female empowerment, etc. Carter’s prose is dark, dense, and rich; word choice and imagery are flawless. All the stories are gloomy and dim, existing in a world of mature and grim fairy stories that provoke thought rather than happy feelings. Only “Puss-in-Boots,” with its suave humor, is an exception.

I...more

2 likes · like · see review

Dec 02, 2008 Jukka added it

Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
I came across this exploring for the Grimm's Fairy Tale read for my book club. These stories are all influenced from fairy tales, all beautifully crafted, stuff that can sweep you away -- gothic and haunting. The stories often take surprising and inspired turns. Here's a snippet for instance, only a taste to show flavor but chosen to not give anything away:

Outside her kitchen window, the hedgerow glistened as if the snow possessed a light of its own; when the sky da...more

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 12, 2013 Randolph Carter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, strange-stories

Wicked twisted fairy tales for adults only. Some of these will be familiar, however I'm not sure if all these are derived from real folk and fairy tales, but it doesn't matter because it seems like they are. Carter releases these type of stories from the often simpering but always patriarchal prison they have been kept in for so long.

These are tales to be told, read out loud. We know that the oral tradition of storytelling probably followed a matriarchal path. But when folk stories finally got...more

2 likes · like · see review

Nov 29, 2007 Cate rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who likes excellent, specific writing or real fairytales

Angela Carter! How have I missed her all these years? My only guess is it's because she's English, and American lit and British lit still doesn't pass seamlessly over the channel. But Angela Carter! What a writer! The style is elegant and OLD, although she's very recent--I felt like I was reading a modern, female Charles Dickens! In my opinion, the best stories in the collection are the title story, a retelling of the Bluebeard tale, and "The Tiger's Bride," a re-visioning of Beauty and the Bea...more Angela Carter! How have I missed her all these years? My only guess is it's because she's English, and American lit and British lit still doesn't pass seamlessly over the channel. But Angela Carter! What a writer! The style is elegant and OLD, although she's very recent--I felt like I was reading a modern, female Charles Dickens! In my opinion, the best stories in the collection are the title story, a retelling of the Bluebeard tale, and "The Tiger's Bride," a re-visioning of Beauty and the Beast. Carter's details are so lovely, syntax clean. I've excerpted the following from "The Bloody Chamber" to attempt doing Carter justice:

"'There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer,' opined my husband's favorite poet; I had learned something of the nature of that similarity on my marriage bed. And now my taper showed me the outlines of a rack. There was also a great wheel, like the ones I had seen in woodcuts of the martyrdoms of the saints, in my old nurse's little store of holy books. And - just one glimpse of it before my little flame caved in and I was left in absolute darkness - a metal figure, hinged at the side, which I knew to be spiked on the inside and to have the name: the Iron Maiden."

I wanted to give more a more beautiful passage but I'm afraid I'd give something crucial away, and it really pays to let Carter impress you with her choices. The Bloody Chamber is a collection that also deals with Puss in Boots, two versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the most famous of Carter's adaptions is "In the Company of Wolves" and it was made into a terrible movie with Angela Lansbury, but don't judge Carter on that. Also here: two vampire stories, werewolf stories, a brief Snow White and another version of Beauty and the Beast. Definitely worth checking out for the holidays--a very satisfying read--so little in the nature of a "gray area" and I find that very refreshing.

*Also* excellent models for fiction students--specific, pertinent details, set expectations that are carried through in one form or the other, and reasonable, responsible character development in the nature of literature.
(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 23, 2007 lynne naranek rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people with a dark twist

Shelves: shortstory, 2007

Thanks to my class exploring Fairy Tales (a woefully inadequate and unfulfilling class, I have to add, so much to cover so little time!), I was introduced to this author, who has a writing style similar to mine, it's such an inspiration to see examples of what I might produce, if I put my mind to it.

The Bloody Chamber is a collection of fairy tales, retold a la Angela Carter. Many are excellent, one or two just "eh", but overall a great read. She seems to reinterpret the tales with an emphasis o...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 06, 2007 Nathanial rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: sadistic preschool teachers

Shelves: horror

{continued from Fireworks}

In Fireworks, we have, at turns, the barbaric village, the haunted mannequin, the lost seashore, the crepuscular forest, the invisible city, the ravaged wilderness, the stolen ocean, and the bustling cemetery. I'm tempted to say, again, that her work considers place initially and person secondarily, almost like Mieville's cityscapes, and yet it's not as simple as that: her rhythmic patterns - of indication and indiscretion, inhibition and incredulity - cannot withstand...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 11, 2008 Evan Schwenk rated it 3 of 5 stars

She re-writes fairy tales to have an ultra-feminismist perspective to them. Needless to say I didn't pull this one off my bookshelf or buy at the good ole Barnes and Nob. Requried reading for my short story class. It definitely was a different and unusual experience, but overall one that I was glad that I had. Modern feministic short story writing at its finest!

1 like · like · see review

Oct 14, 2007 Jeannine rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fairy tale re-writers, feminists

This is Angela Carter's important work in which re-writes fairy tales with feminist twists. The title story, especially, is a fascinating reclamation of the story of Bluebeard. I tried not to read this book for a long time, but finally gave in after several strong recommendations from friends and colleagues. I thought it was interesting, and important, but sometimes, alas, I thought - wow - I would have done this or that differently, or I just felt a little disappointed, but maybe that's because...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 09, 2013 Max Fincher rated it 4 of 5 stars

In 'The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories', Carter revisions many of the conventions of both Gothic fiction and fairy tales, often from the perspective of the stories female protagonists, adding new twists to both genres. The title story draws on the Bluebeard myth of the psychotic husband incarcerating his wives as trophy possessions, and is 'bloody' in every sense. Other stories take their inspiration from the tales of Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, and the vampire and werewolf traditio...more

like · see review

Apr 17, 2013 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

You guys. I'm totally mad at you. No one told me about this book!?! It's been around since 1979 and I only just found out about it?!
Well, I've read it now. And I forgive you. You know how I feel about violence, you thought maybe it would be too horrifying. You thought maybe it would give me nightmares and I just wasn't ready for it. You know what, I don't think I was. So you were right to keep it from me. Now it feels like a country I discovered all by myself by accident.
I've read a lot of fai...more

like · see review

Mar 16, 2013 Mel rated it 4 of 5 stars

What makes the retelling of these fairy tales so nice is how Carter manages to write in a poetic, imagery filled style that - while very different from the traditional mode of fairy tales - is very evocative of what they imply. To me, there are two stories in particular, "The Erl-King" and "The Lady of the House of Love," which are flat out stunning. "The Lady of the House of Love" is actually a vampire story and the way Carter delves into the detail of the house and of our reluctant vampire her...more

like · see review

Mar 16, 2013 Sienna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, kindle

Angela Carter was right; there are some eyes can eat you. She gazed into them boldly, curiously, fearlessly, and these sensual fairy tale revisionings allow the more timid among us to do the same, to learn what it's like to be devoured — if only by words. Brief or meandering, playful or sinister, they all succeed to varying degrees. My attention may have wandered occasionally, but at other times I savored each carefully crafted sentence. "The Erl-King" was my favorite. Carter throws us into a wo...more Angela Carter was right; there are some eyes can eat you. She gazed into them boldly, curiously, fearlessly, and these sensual fairy tale revisionings allow the more timid among us to do the same, to learn what it's like to be devoured — if only by words. Brief or meandering, playful or sinister, they all succeed to varying degrees. My attention may have wandered occasionally, but at other times I savored each carefully crafted sentence. "The Erl-King" was my favorite. Carter throws us into a wooded enclosure full of labyrinthine linguistic modifiers at the outset and waves goodbye, smiling. (It's an unsettling smile.)

The lucidity, the clarity of the light that afternoon was sufficient to itself; perfect transparency must be impenetrable, these vertical bars of a brass-coloured distillation of light coming down from sulphur-yellow interstices in a sky hunkered with grey clouds that bulge with more rain.

What a mouthful. And it's overkill, of course, or it should be, but somehow she makes it work. The language is a far cry from the leave-your-modesty-at-the-door Franglais of "Puss-in-Boots," the reluctant vampire seductress and her unimaginative savior, or the wolfish closing trio of tales, populated by "grave-eyed children" in cold-hearted northern climes. It tickles me to realize that each reader's highlights and lowlights will vary; each story must have its own set of adherents partial to that particular style. I suppose I'm a fan of seeking kinship, of finding resemblance, in the unexpected. I like layers, and I found plenty of them in these pages.

Eat me, drink me; thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden, I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning.

One quick complaint, and some advice: the Kindle version opens with Helen Simpson's very spoilery introduction, which I recommend saving for the end unless you like hand-holding explanations for the self-explanatory. Just read the stories.(less)

like · see review

Mar 15, 2013 Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter is a set of short stories that parody folk-tale and legend. Let’s not beat about the bush. The bloody chamber in question is the vagina and the capital of these stories is sex. But they also re-interpret and re-work fairy tale, myth and legend so that the stories take on – literally and explicitly – the adult rating they always suggested.

There are wolves that change into men, and men that change into wolves. Now there is versatility. One story, The Company Of...more The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter is a set of short stories that parody folk-tale and legend. Let’s not beat about the bush. The bloody chamber in question is the vagina and the capital of these stories is sex. But they also re-interpret and re-work fairy tale, myth and legend so that the stories take on – literally and explicitly – the adult rating they always suggested.

There are wolves that change into men, and men that change into wolves. Now there is versatility. One story, The Company Of Wolves, did in fact become a film in the 1980s, when Angela Carter’s star shone bright.

The Bloody Chamber offers re-thinks on Dracula and Bluebeard. It gives new life to Little Red Riding Hood and a prurient Puss-in-Boots. Here, Beauty meets Beast and, via these time-honoured characters and themes, Angela Carter explores sexuality, both reality and myth, from a female perspective. She describes the insecurity that arises from threat and the fear engendered by anticipated violence. But she also revels in the power to control, to entice, to render powerless through overdosing on ecstasy.

A hint of torture is always near. The Bloody Chamber inhabits spaces in the human psyche that are never far from pain, always flirting with sadism. From the pain of unrequited love, right through to physical mutilation, the whole spectrum of torture appears to lie just beyond the pain of love. The boundary is often blurred in these stories and some characters meet decidedly sticky ends.

But Angela Carter avoids merely gratuitous fantasy. We can all – if we have little imagination – describe women changing colour (for some reason or other), growing green scales, bursting out in fangs or claws and then sucking the life-blood from their lovers. Such fantastical scenarios soon become not only repetitive but also trite and meaningless if divorced from some rooting parallel of symbolism. In Angela Carter’s work that linkage to a form of reality and experience always seems to be present. Folk tales and fairy stories persisted perhaps because of these links. Perhaps people never believed their literal truth, but their imagery did relate to some, often hidden aspects of experience or inner fear. Not all men are Bluebeards who imprison their wives in a state of undying suffering. Not all men change into werewolves and consume maidens. But then not every husband is always gentle with his wife. Not every lad approaches maidens with finesse.

Enhancing these stories is Angela Carter’s very special prose. It is far from silken smooth and rarely even aspires to the transparent. On the contrary, we are presented with a veritable brocade of language, a densely-woven and complex pattern of allusion, pun and metaphor. The texture is always pithy, the sound often dissonant. As ideas clash, so does the language that Angela Carter employs to pick the fight. In places the density may even be overdone, but in general the Gothic dark does lead us up to the vaults rather than oppress with its darkness.

The style may be dated, and the original idea may be somewhat over-stated. But these stories remain beautifully written and still enthral.
(less)

like · see review

Mar 02, 2013 Bogdan rated it 4 of 5 stars

завлекательная обложка провоцирующего свойства (некая девица в наряде а ля немецкий дирндл с фонарем на фоне надписи «а девочка спит глубоким сном на бабушкиной постели в объятиях нежного волка») способна скрывать интересные истории – издание сборника анджелы картер «the bloody chamber and other stories» («кровавая комната») может в этом убедить.

десять историй, которые позиционируются как сказки, к сказкам в полном смысле этого слова имеют несколько отдаленное отношение. «кровавая комната» имее...more завлекательная обложка провоцирующего свойства (некая девица в наряде а ля немецкий дирндл с фонарем на фоне надписи «а девочка спит глубоким сном на бабушкиной постели в объятиях нежного волка») способна скрывать интересные истории – издание сборника анджелы картер «the bloody chamber and other stories» («кровавая комната») может в этом убедить.

десять историй, которые позиционируются как сказки, к сказкам в полном смысле этого слова имеют несколько отдаленное отношение. «кровавая комната» имеет подоплекой синюю бороду, «женитьба мистера лайона» как и «невеста тигра» напоминают историю о красавице и чудовище, в той самой мере, насколько она родственна сказке об аленьком цветочке, «кот в сапогах» в реляциях не нуждается, «лесной царь» – весьма оригинальная реляция к стихотворению гете, «снегурочка» – nomen est omen, как говорится, «хозяйка дома любви» – помесь историй о графе дракуле и графине батори, «оборотень» и «волчье братство» – две апелляции к искомой красной шапочке, а последняя история «волчица алиса» удивительным образом близки к истории каспара хаузера.

а больше всего анджела картер напоминает сама себя – сборник «locus solus» в ознаменование вечной памяти раймона русселя презентовал неколько лет назад нашему неискушенному читателю ее рассказ «хозяин», в котором эта английская делезианка (не путать с вагнериткой) представила номадический фантазм «1000 плато» - становление-зверем, облеченное в язык. человек-волк и девочка-крыса, известные не в последнюю очередь благодаря дедушке фрейду расцветают буйным цветом как на страницах «хозяина», так и в «кровавой комнате».

пробуждение чувственности, разврата и пред-ощущение собственной способности ко злу в первой истории, соединенное со звериным обликом героя, родственного не только фауне, но и флоре в виде умирающих лилий. колебание между зверем-человеком и человеком-зверем во втором рассказе, зверь, превращающий человека в зверя в третьем; зверь, целиком и полностью перенимающий на себя словесность и, соответственно, естество человека в четвертом. зверь, пробуждаемый человеком к человеку в пятом – посредством смерти зверочеловека; звериное нутро, скрывающееся в человеческом теле – шестой рассказ. борьба зверя, растения и человека в недо- или (как посмотреть) слишком-человеке в седьмом рассказе, насмешка над человеком посредством зверя в восьмом и девятом. и, как зеркало, человек и его тень, двойничество и неразделимоть человечного и звериного в десятой истории.

роскошный, барочный, избыточный стиль и язык словно созданы для перевода, сочные фразы, неожиданные повороты (бабушка-оборотень в красной шапочке), прекрасное метафорическое пространство страдания, томления, обреченности, жестокости и неотвратимости, щемящая человечность, такая хрупкая и прерывистая, подсознание, «ид» такое могущественное и вырывающееся из под контроля, сумеречные видения, полутемные краски – праздник и пиршество слова, создающего картины, которые визуальный образ неспособен передать. сложно определить апогей сборника, он как будто состоит из синусоид, рассказы картинами и ассоциациями накладываются друг на друга, упреждают один другой. короткие и длинные, они абсолютно равноправны, но если бы мне надо было бы остановить свой выбор на одном, то это был бы, наверное, «лесной царь» – и совсем не из-за удушливой немецкой подоплеки, родственной профессии.

«В этом году малиновка снова свила себе гнездышко в соломенной крыше; она садится на несгоревшее полено, чистит клюв, ерошит перышки. в ее песне звучит тихая жалоба и какая-то грусть, потому что год подошел к завершению – малиновка остается подругой для человека, несмотря на рану в груди, из которой Лесной Царь вырвал ее сердце.
Положи голову мне на колени, чтобы я больше не могла видеть зеленые солнца твоих глаз, затягивающих меня внутрь.
Руки мои дрожат.
Пока он будет лежать в полудреме, я возьму две большие охапки его шелестящих волос и очень тихо совью их в косы, так что он не проснется, и так же тихо, руками нежными, как дождь, я удавлю его этими косами.
А потом она откроет все клетки и выпустит птиц на волю; и они снова превратятся в девушек, все до единой, и у каждой на шее будет багровый след его любовного укуса. Она срежет его огромную шевелюру ножом, которым он обычно свежевал кроликов; она натянет на старую скрипку пять струн, пять его седых волосков.
И скрипка сама заиграет нестройную мелодию. Смычок сам запляшет по новым струнам, выпевая: «Мама, мама, ты меня убила!»
(less)

like · see review

Jan 30, 2013 Cleo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Bloody Chamber is a deliciously dark little volume of fairy tales by the famed Angela Carter. I loved some of them more than others, but the majority of the stories are really good. In a morbid sort of way. Some, like the title story, are disturbingly bloody, others, like "Puss-In-Boots" are bawdily funny. "The Bloody Chamber" is a retelling of Bluebeard, and this book also includes "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", a Beauty and the Beast retelling, "The Tiger's Bride", also a Beauty and the Beast...more The Bloody Chamber is a deliciously dark little volume of fairy tales by the famed Angela Carter. I loved some of them more than others, but the majority of the stories are really good. In a morbid sort of way. Some, like the title story, are disturbingly bloody, others, like "Puss-In-Boots" are bawdily funny. "The Bloody Chamber" is a retelling of Bluebeard, and this book also includes "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", a Beauty and the Beast retelling, "The Tiger's Bride", also a Beauty and the Beast retelling, "Puss-In-Boots", "The Erl-King", "The Snow Child", "The Lady of the House of Love" which is a vampire story, "The Werewolf", "The Company of Wolves", and "Wolf-Alice". My favorites are the first five or so; they're more entertaining and less completely dark (except for "The Bloody Chamber", of course).

These stories are populated by beasts, and vampires, and werewolves, and witches, dark and gripping, and dark and grim. Angela Carter has a really distinctive writing style; it's sensual and descriptive, dense but somehow not overwritten. But also, each story has its own tone. "The Bloody Chamber" is descriptive and horrifying, "Puss-In-Boots" is narrated by the rascally cat himself, and both Beauty and the Beast stories are quite different too. "The Tiger's Bride", though similar in title to one of my favorite books, The Tiger's Wife, is not at all like the latter book. The "Beauty" character is gambled away by her father to a mysterious masked lord.

I love dark fairy tales, and of the various collections I've read (My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, The Rose and the Beast, Lies Knives and Girls in Red Dresses, etc), The Bloody Chamber is by far the best of these books. It also the most deeply and chillingly dark, to the core.

One note on the edition I read: it's from Penguin, a special Penguin Ink edition, and it's marvelously beautiful, in the style of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions, though it's not a classic...yet. I loved the art and the feel of the cover and the font in this book. It's the kind of design that you never get tired of looking at and feeling. I really want to own this book now, not only for the amazing quality of its stories, but also for its design. I also really want to read Nights at the Circus, another of Angela Carter's works. Hint hint.

www.novareviews.blogspot.com (less)

like · see review

Dec 18, 2012 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-short-stories

THE BLOODY CHAMBER and Other Stories. (1979; this ed. 2012). Angela Carter. ***.
Angela Carter (1940-1992) was an English writer who specialized in fairy tales. Aside from her translation of several works in this genre, – most notably the 17th century tales of Charles Perrault - she turned to them for inspiration in producing her own works. Her technique was not a simple re-telling of the various tales, but a telling of them in a way that invested them with greater meaning. Her technique was to...more

like · see review

Dec 03, 2012 Catlin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: school-reading

My, my, my - how to classify this collection. I can't say that I found all the short stories pleasurable to read, they weren't intended to be! In fact, when I first started 'The Bloody Chamber' the book went across the room in disgust when the protagonist found her new husband's pornography and his response.

That being said, just looking at it from the surface it should by no means put off any potentential readers. For a shallow read 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon' is absolutly delightful.

However, if...more

like · see review

Nov 04, 2012 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

I begin reading novels with the presumption of brilliance; I begin reading short stories with the expectation of disappointment. It is for novels to fail; it is for short stories to triumph. Call me a genre-ist, call me a novel-ist (no really, call me a novelist!), call me what you will.

Angela Carter’s collection (as recommended by E. - thanks!) The Bloody Chamber does so well as a collection it more than proves its burden of brilliance. And here’s my hypothesis for why it’s so great: it sets ou...more I begin reading novels with the presumption of brilliance; I begin reading short stories with the expectation of disappointment. It is for novels to fail; it is for short stories to triumph. Call me a genre-ist, call me a novel-ist (no really, call me a novelist!), call me what you will.

Angela Carter’s collection (as recommended by E. - thanks!) The Bloody Chamber does so well as a collection it more than proves its burden of brilliance. And here’s my hypothesis for why it’s so great: it sets out to be a short story collection. Most of the other collections I’ve encountered read as patchwork efforts wherein a writer realized they’d amassed enough stories to call it a collection, puzzled out some central themes, maybe did some edits, and worked on a good title. With Carter, however, it’s clear - or at least I hope this is the case - that she decided to write a collection of fucked up fairy tales and did just that. So it’s no surprise that scenes repeat, characters share characteristics, the themes - curiosity, sexuality, youth, virginity - bleed (ha! get it? Bloody chamber?) from one story to the next. My terrible pun is evidence of this too, as blood and the colour red penetrate all of the stories as characters must confront the physical body and its (mostly sexual) urges. So many deflowered virgins.

I also enjoyed Carter’s willingness to see the human as one other kind of beast caught up in a fantastical world of desire and impulse. That we often behave without reason, or more often still, counter-reason, is exploited by Carter in a number of the stories when the reader watches in car-accident-attention-horror as yet another woman falls victim (or rather, agentally victimizes herself) to yet another beastly man or manly beast.

Here’s a good example:

“That long-drawn, wavering howl has, for all its fearful resonance, some inherent sadness in it, as if the beasts would love to be less beastly if only they knew how and never case to mourn their own condition” (112).

Swap out “beast” and pop in “human” and you’ve got the collection covered. Well, add a bit more blood and you’d have it covered.

Each story provides an unexpected narrative point of view (I loved, for instance, the animal perspective of Puss in ‘Puss in Boots’ - at long last a non-human protagonist I enjoyed!), some twist classic fairy tales, others simply allude to them. In either case the resonances make for a disturbing read.

Recommend.(less)

like · see review

Jul 19, 2012 Billierosie Billierosie rated it 5 of 5 stars

It’s been a few years now, since I discovered Angela Carter. It was on a course about adaptations of novels into film. Fairly recently, Neil Jordan had released “The Company of Wolves,” from the Angela Carter short story of the same name. It’s a strange, haunting story -- a re-telling, if you like of the tale of “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Angela Carter's re-writes of traditional European folk/fairy tales bring with them dark aspects of the human psyche that would have existed in the oral tradition...more

like · see review

Jul 11, 2012 Sakura87 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autori-inglesi, racconti, erotico, gotico, novecento

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Questo è un libro che, perentoriamente, dovrà essere riaperto: possiede diverse chiavi di lettura, nonché una fitta rete di simbologie di cui sono riuscita a cogliere solo la superficie. Ho provato a trarne una piccola recensione, che, in realtà, vista la complessità del testo è solo un commento superficiale.

Si tratta di dieci racconti, quasi tutti brevi, che rivisitano le fiabe più comuni nella loro versione Perraultiana in chiave gotica, orrorifica o anche erotica:
- La camera di sangue, ispir...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Fiction Fanatics: May 2013 - The Bloody Chamber	10	24	May 19, 2013 07:10am
UW-Parkside Library: The Bloody Chamber	1	3	Dec 18, 2012 12:45pm
La Stamberga dei ...: Angolotesti: "La compagnia dei lupi" di Angela Carter	1	4	Oct 19, 2012 04:21am
Gothic fairy tales	6	81	Feb 17, 2012 08:14pm

combine
Other Editions (25)

More editions...

Genres

Short Stories

437 users

Fantasy

352 users

Fantasy > Fairy Tales

170 users

Horror

167 users

Gothic

89 users

Literature

47 users

Feminism

43 users

Classics

38 users

Paranormal > Vampires

29 users

Anthologies

28 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Angela Carter

From Wikipedia: Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.

She married twice, first in 1960 to...more From Wikipedia: Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.

She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, where she claims in Nothing Sacred (1982) that she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised." She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972). She was there at the same time as Roland Barthes, who published his experiences in Empire of Signs (1970).

She then explored the United States, Asia, and Europe, helped by her fluency in French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of East Anglia. In 1977 Carter married Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son.

As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman, collected in Shaking a Leg. She adapted a number of her short stories for radio and wrote two original radio dramas on Richard Dadd and Ronald Firbank. Two of her fictions have been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1987). She was actively involved in both film adaptations, her screenplays are published in the collected dramatic writings, The Curious Room, together with her radio scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Wolf's Orlando, an unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders (based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures) and other works. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003).

At the time of her death, Carter was embarking on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens. However, only a synopsis survives.

Her novel Nights at the Circus won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature.

Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer. Her obituary published in The Observer said, "She was the opposite of parochial. Nothing, for her, was outside the pale: she wanted to know about everything and everyone, and every place and every word. She relished life and language hugely, and reveled in the diverse."
(less)

More about Angela Carter...

Books by Angela Carter

Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About The Bloody Chamber

8 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Bloody Chamber and...

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.

from "The Lady of the Haunted House” — 93 people liked it

“When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.” — 51 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
avg rating	preview: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories Goodreads rating: 4.07 (9453 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49011.The_Bloody_Chamber_and_Other_Stories?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348808640l/49011.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49011.The_Bloody_Chamber_and_Other_Stories?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter[/url]

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website