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Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories
One of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident. This volume presents Carter's considerable legacy of short fiction gathered from published books, and includes early and previously unpublished stories. From reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of classic folklore and fairy tales, to stunning snapshots of modern life in all its tawdry glory, we are able to chart the evolution of Carter's marvelous, magical vision.
462 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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6591 people want to read
About the author
Angela Carter
212 books3,727 followersBorn 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."
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."
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July 19, 2018
Salman Rushdie dice en el prólogo que Angela Carter era una escritora demasiado particular, demasiado extrema, sin embargo, como para disolverse con facilidad: ahora formal y extravagante, ahora exótica y coloquial, exquisita y burda, preciosista y vulgar, fabuladora y socialista, púrpura y negra.
Y transgresora, irónica, macabra, irreverente, surrealista. Barroca y excesiva en ocasiones, perturbadora casi siempre. Asombrosa en todos y cada uno de los relatos.
En este volumen se reúnen las cuatro colecciones publicadas en vida de la autora, en orden cronológico -Fuegos artificiales, La cámara sangrienta, Venus negra y Fantasmas americanos y maravillas del Viejo Mundo- más seis cuentos inéditos.
Prácticamente todos y cada uno de los cuentos destacan por algo. Incluso el que menos me gustó, el extrañísimo Una fábula victoriana -no puedo decir ni siquiera que lo haya entendido- me parece digno de observar mientras sufres escalofríos ante la tarea a la que tuvo que enfrentarse el traductor.
Me maravilla y fascina la manera en que trata tan diferentes temáticas (reinterpretaciones de cuentos populares, Lewis Carrol, el Marqués de Sade, Edgar Allan Poe, un hombre enamorado de su contrabajo, Lizzie Borden, folclore, Jeanne Duvall) de una manera personalísima, feminista, erótica, elegante, inteligente.
Parece que hay consenso en afirmar que La cámara sangrienta es su obra maestra. Quizás sea también mi favorito, ya lo había leído en la edición que tiene Sexto Piso de esa recopilación en solitario, ilustrado magníficamente por Alejandra Acosta, que guardo como un tesoro. Tras esta segunda lectura puedo decir con seguridad que es uno de mis libros favoritos.
La colección me acompaña desde hace ya bastantes meses, no creo que sea una obra para leerse del tirón, y ahora que la he terminado me resisto a dejarla en la estantería. Volveré a ella más pronto que tarde.
Y transgresora, irónica, macabra, irreverente, surrealista. Barroca y excesiva en ocasiones, perturbadora casi siempre. Asombrosa en todos y cada uno de los relatos.
En este volumen se reúnen las cuatro colecciones publicadas en vida de la autora, en orden cronológico -Fuegos artificiales, La cámara sangrienta, Venus negra y Fantasmas americanos y maravillas del Viejo Mundo- más seis cuentos inéditos.
Prácticamente todos y cada uno de los cuentos destacan por algo. Incluso el que menos me gustó, el extrañísimo Una fábula victoriana -no puedo decir ni siquiera que lo haya entendido- me parece digno de observar mientras sufres escalofríos ante la tarea a la que tuvo que enfrentarse el traductor.
Me maravilla y fascina la manera en que trata tan diferentes temáticas (reinterpretaciones de cuentos populares, Lewis Carrol, el Marqués de Sade, Edgar Allan Poe, un hombre enamorado de su contrabajo, Lizzie Borden, folclore, Jeanne Duvall) de una manera personalísima, feminista, erótica, elegante, inteligente.
Parece que hay consenso en afirmar que La cámara sangrienta es su obra maestra. Quizás sea también mi favorito, ya lo había leído en la edición que tiene Sexto Piso de esa recopilación en solitario, ilustrado magníficamente por Alejandra Acosta, que guardo como un tesoro. Tras esta segunda lectura puedo decir con seguridad que es uno de mis libros favoritos.
La colección me acompaña desde hace ya bastantes meses, no creo que sea una obra para leerse del tirón, y ahora que la he terminado me resisto a dejarla en la estantería. Volveré a ella más pronto que tarde.
September 18, 2008
Reading a short story by Angela Carter is the equivalent of visiting a friend who has travelled the world and now lives by herself in an apartment filled with cats, trinkets and incense. Some days, as you sit in this friend's living room, waiting for her to brew some exotic tea, the scent of burning incense lulls you into a reverie, the way in which the sunlight hits the smoke gives her living room a mysterious feel. At other times, your friend makes the mistake of lighting too many incense sticks, keeping the windows closed, the curtains shut; the items hanging on her wall suddenly look dull, the clothes hanging off her body tawdry, the bright red lipstick on her face wrong for the occasion.
When Carter is good, her stories transcend their fairy tale roots like dreams with hidden meanings. When Carter is bad, your mind drifts away from every sentence and all you can think of is skipping to the next tale.
When Carter is good, her stories transcend their fairy tale roots like dreams with hidden meanings. When Carter is bad, your mind drifts away from every sentence and all you can think of is skipping to the next tale.
December 28, 2007
an ex-lover gave me the gift of angela carter, and when she did, she confessed that every time she opened her copy of "burning your boats" that she found some new story she had not read before. shortly after that, i got my own copy of the collection. i've had it for several years, travelled with it, kept it close to my beds and my toilets, and the same seems true for me. i am forever falling in love with this book, forever reading tales of werewolves and purple-madam-puppets and tigers outloud in cars and sick beds, and to initiate long nights of dirty dirty behavior. i am always finding some as-yet undiscovered delight. carter's writing is impeccable and enchanting - she does what so few feminist fairy tale writers are brave enough to do - she embraces darkness and evil and flesh and makes her heroines fierce and failing and fuckable. and terrifying. she is the author who most consistently inspires me to keep working the story circuit - investigating the old tales and telling them with my very young, and very perverse, tongue.
Currently reading
November 5, 2021I have technically been reading this, in spaced out bursts, since last year. Don't know when I started, but I decided that I should actually add this to my GoodReads. I will update this review accordingly until I finish.
What I've Read So Far:
"The Man Who Loved a Double Bass." A story that seems simple at first, about a musician who greatly admires the titular instrument, but it is actually unsettling. Was just a tad bit confused with some things. 3.5/5 stars.
"A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home." Another story with an unsettling end. A woman recounts her complicated upbringing. But perhaps her upbringing has so disturbed her she can't conceptualize who is who and what is what. 4/5 stars.
"A Victorian Fable (With Glossary)." Wasn't really sure what the story was here. I think this is more Angela Carter playing with language. Fun for the writer, not the reader. 2/5 stars (Sorry, Angela!)
"A Souvenir of Japan." Inspired by Carter's time in Japan with her then-lover, Sozo Araki, who was not faithful to her. Part of her experiences in Japan helped her forumalte her thoughts on patriarchy and gender--which would later go into her novel The Passion of New Eve. This story seems to be Carter realizing that patriarchy is everywhere, but also her love letter to her time in Japan. 4/5 stars.
"The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter." Holy crap...That ending. An unnamed society, possibly somewhere in Central Asia or the Caucasus (we don't know), that has a huge taboo against incest; something that haunts their history. In the beginning, the titular executioner kills his own son for committing such a taboo with his own sister. But we soon learn that those who hold all the power can commit such taboos; and the most seemingly innocent acting and looking individuals are not always forced into it. A tough subject matter that will disturb some. 5/5 stars
What I've Read So Far:
"The Man Who Loved a Double Bass." A story that seems simple at first, about a musician who greatly admires the titular instrument, but it is actually unsettling. Was just a tad bit confused with some things. 3.5/5 stars.
"A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home." Another story with an unsettling end. A woman recounts her complicated upbringing. But perhaps her upbringing has so disturbed her she can't conceptualize who is who and what is what. 4/5 stars.
"A Victorian Fable (With Glossary)." Wasn't really sure what the story was here. I think this is more Angela Carter playing with language. Fun for the writer, not the reader. 2/5 stars (Sorry, Angela!)
"A Souvenir of Japan." Inspired by Carter's time in Japan with her then-lover, Sozo Araki, who was not faithful to her. Part of her experiences in Japan helped her forumalte her thoughts on patriarchy and gender--which would later go into her novel The Passion of New Eve. This story seems to be Carter realizing that patriarchy is everywhere, but also her love letter to her time in Japan. 4/5 stars.
"The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter." Holy crap...That ending. An unnamed society, possibly somewhere in Central Asia or the Caucasus (we don't know), that has a huge taboo against incest; something that haunts their history. In the beginning, the titular executioner kills his own son for committing such a taboo with his own sister. But we soon learn that those who hold all the power can commit such taboos; and the most seemingly innocent acting and looking individuals are not always forced into it. A tough subject matter that will disturb some. 5/5 stars
February 10, 2024
This book includes all of the stories in order from Angela Carter’s published short fiction collections, as well as a handful of her uncollected stories. A lot of Carter’s short stories are actually tales, often retellings of classic ones, so they exist outside of time and dispense with the writerly trappings one typically finds in conventional, realist short stories or even in much nonrealist genre fiction such as horror or science fiction. So, reading through this collection was like reading an even darker, more warped version of the big book of Grimm’s fairy tales I used to read as a kid. Given that so much of her short fiction is like this, though, I sometimes found it a little too similar thematically, especially having read a few of her novels, where I think she does a better job of uniting myth, fairytale, and her own strands of feminist thought. Still, Carter was a stunning, original writer whose style is so rich and alluring that even the least of these tales kept my attention. Brief responses to the individual collections follow:
Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces
This was my first foray into Carter's short fiction after enjoying several of her novels in the past. A rather stunning debut collection—how did she do it? Surely she was one of those writers who appears on the scene fully evolved in style—well armed and ready to storm the ramparts of bland, uninspired fiction.
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
The kind of stories you want to live inside of. Reading them, the fabric of this world tears asunder...revealing in that gash a more primal view of good and evil. Familiar tales bent just so...lacerated retellings for knowing readers.
Black Venus
Not as consistently good as her first two collections but still better than average as far as collections go.
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders
Similar to Black Venus in terms of consistency, but Carter is such a master stylist that even her lesser stories are a pleasure to read at a sentence level.
Uncollected Stories
There are six uncollected stories included in the collection—three early ones from the 1960s at the beginning and three at the end from the period 1970–1981. Of the three early stories, ‘A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home’ stands out as the best, most accurately predicting the future of what would issue forth from her pen. Of the later three stories, ‘The Scarlet House’ is the most powerful—melding themes and constructs from such wicked fantasy tales as ‘The Bloody Chamber’ with those of her more science fiction-oriented novels The Passion of New Eve and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman.
Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces
This was my first foray into Carter's short fiction after enjoying several of her novels in the past. A rather stunning debut collection—how did she do it? Surely she was one of those writers who appears on the scene fully evolved in style—well armed and ready to storm the ramparts of bland, uninspired fiction.
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
The kind of stories you want to live inside of. Reading them, the fabric of this world tears asunder...revealing in that gash a more primal view of good and evil. Familiar tales bent just so...lacerated retellings for knowing readers.
Black Venus
Not as consistently good as her first two collections but still better than average as far as collections go.
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders
Similar to Black Venus in terms of consistency, but Carter is such a master stylist that even her lesser stories are a pleasure to read at a sentence level.
Uncollected Stories
There are six uncollected stories included in the collection—three early ones from the 1960s at the beginning and three at the end from the period 1970–1981. Of the three early stories, ‘A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home’ stands out as the best, most accurately predicting the future of what would issue forth from her pen. Of the later three stories, ‘The Scarlet House’ is the most powerful—melding themes and constructs from such wicked fantasy tales as ‘The Bloody Chamber’ with those of her more science fiction-oriented novels The Passion of New Eve and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman.
November 4, 2018
"She is Atlantis to Me"
This omnibus edition collects the stories from four original collections (published from 1974 to 1993), while adding six stories, three early works from 1962 to 1966, and three others written between 1971 and 1981 (and previously uncollected).
I'll review the individual collections under their original titles, which means that this review will focus on just the additional six stories.
Menarche a Trois
"The Man Who Loved a Double Bass" and "A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home" capture distinct milieux or subcultures: the former the trad jazz scene in London and East Anglia before the start of the swinging sixties, and the latter, despite the title, a portrait of male and female adolescence in a large family living above a stable in semi-rural England.
Both stories are populated by eccentrics. Johnny Jameson, the bass player, is "as mad as a hatter". Even within the "phenomenally close-knit creative community" that is "the world of artists", "the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring of those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad."
Johhny's friends call his bass, Lola, for it is a lady, "her shape was that of a full-breasted, full-hipped woman, recalling certain primitive effigies of the Mother Goddess so gloriously, essentially feminine was she, stripped of irrelevancies of head and limbs."
The group's fans are sharp youngsters, leatherjackets, teds and art students ("crop-haired modernists"), "the children of local doctors, clergymen, teachers, and retired soldiers". Together, they rage against the darkness to the soundtrack of the "raving, rioting, hit parade happy West End Syncopators".
In the second story, the (female) narrator's mother is both beautiful (Carter describes her in terms of Botticelli's Venus, and Nefertiti - "the woman's beauty was so intense that it seemed to have the quality of a deformity, so far was it from the human norm") and rough, though she was possessed of great wisdom - "the brutal, yet withal vital, wisdom of a peasant." She offers her daughter, Susan, a self-defence mechanism that helps her overcome her extreme shyness, so much so that it becomes "the key to the world". I won't reveal the nature of this key, suffice to say it requires the use of the imagination:
Still, "the bright peonies of the menstrual flow blossomed. My breasts grew like young doves...the child I had been was dead; dead and replaced by a beautiful woman whom I did not know...I glowed with beauty."
She has narcissistic tendencies, but still concludes that "Je suis un autre." Her brother, Jason, on the other hand, "went to the door and vanished, laughing, into the night."
It's tempting to read these stories as autobiographical, but it's not necessary. They reveal her empathy with the outsider, her identification with l'autre. Like the fairy tales that she would later fabricate, these early stories describe a person, a girl, a woman experiencing her rites of passage.
The third of the early stories ("A Victorian Fable (With Glossary)") is a two page story told in slang that requires a nine page glossary to decipher it. Perhaps it intimates that a fable or fairy tale often consists of a code that must be cracked before it can be truly understood.
The Systematic Randomness of My Connections
Two of the the three previously uncollected stories feature evocative surroundings ("The Scarlet House" and "The Snow Pavilion") that recall Edgar Allan Poe.
The Scarlet House is a kind of hell, a "place of annihilation", in which memory is obliterated by the Count, who regards memory as the main difference between man and the beasts:
"The Snow Pavilion" and the third story, "The Quilt Maker" are less metaphysical, but adopt the structure of fairy tales more obviously than the first story.
The latter of these stories raises the question of autobiography again. The narrator mentions that she is "a skinny redhead", that she was "born and bred...in the Protestant north working-class tradition", and that she is now married to a house carpenter. She even refers to the middle-aged quilt maker of the story as "ma semblable [counterpart], ma soeur", who is "turning her face vigorously against the rocks and trees of the patient wilderness waiting around us." But then, Angela Carter might have considered any woman to be her counterpart or sister.
Reviews of the Individual Collections:
Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Black Venus
American Ghosts & Old World Wonders
This omnibus edition collects the stories from four original collections (published from 1974 to 1993), while adding six stories, three early works from 1962 to 1966, and three others written between 1971 and 1981 (and previously uncollected).
I'll review the individual collections under their original titles, which means that this review will focus on just the additional six stories.
Menarche a Trois
"The Man Who Loved a Double Bass" and "A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home" capture distinct milieux or subcultures: the former the trad jazz scene in London and East Anglia before the start of the swinging sixties, and the latter, despite the title, a portrait of male and female adolescence in a large family living above a stable in semi-rural England.
Both stories are populated by eccentrics. Johnny Jameson, the bass player, is "as mad as a hatter". Even within the "phenomenally close-knit creative community" that is "the world of artists", "the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring of those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad."
Johhny's friends call his bass, Lola, for it is a lady, "her shape was that of a full-breasted, full-hipped woman, recalling certain primitive effigies of the Mother Goddess so gloriously, essentially feminine was she, stripped of irrelevancies of head and limbs."
The group's fans are sharp youngsters, leatherjackets, teds and art students ("crop-haired modernists"), "the children of local doctors, clergymen, teachers, and retired soldiers". Together, they rage against the darkness to the soundtrack of the "raving, rioting, hit parade happy West End Syncopators".
In the second story, the (female) narrator's mother is both beautiful (Carter describes her in terms of Botticelli's Venus, and Nefertiti - "the woman's beauty was so intense that it seemed to have the quality of a deformity, so far was it from the human norm") and rough, though she was possessed of great wisdom - "the brutal, yet withal vital, wisdom of a peasant." She offers her daughter, Susan, a self-defence mechanism that helps her overcome her extreme shyness, so much so that it becomes "the key to the world". I won't reveal the nature of this key, suffice to say it requires the use of the imagination:
"Forced into myself, I became bookish, walking five miles to the free library in my cracked clogs. I read, I read, I read...I was a helpless addict; so precious were those books to me...My mind grew in the darkness like a flower. But my isolation increased. I could not communicate my love, my wonder, my veritable lust for things of the spirit, the intellect, with my parents - nor, indeed, with my teachers, for them I hated."
Still, "the bright peonies of the menstrual flow blossomed. My breasts grew like young doves...the child I had been was dead; dead and replaced by a beautiful woman whom I did not know...I glowed with beauty."
She has narcissistic tendencies, but still concludes that "Je suis un autre." Her brother, Jason, on the other hand, "went to the door and vanished, laughing, into the night."
It's tempting to read these stories as autobiographical, but it's not necessary. They reveal her empathy with the outsider, her identification with l'autre. Like the fairy tales that she would later fabricate, these early stories describe a person, a girl, a woman experiencing her rites of passage.
The third of the early stories ("A Victorian Fable (With Glossary)") is a two page story told in slang that requires a nine page glossary to decipher it. Perhaps it intimates that a fable or fairy tale often consists of a code that must be cracked before it can be truly understood.
The Systematic Randomness of My Connections
Two of the the three previously uncollected stories feature evocative surroundings ("The Scarlet House" and "The Snow Pavilion") that recall Edgar Allan Poe.
The Scarlet House is a kind of hell, a "place of annihilation", in which memory is obliterated by the Count, who regards memory as the main difference between man and the beasts:
"The beasts were born to live but man was born to remember. Out of his memory, he made abstract patterns of significant forms...Man is an animal who insists on making patterns, says the Count contemptuously; all the world you think so highly of is nothing but pretty floral wallpaper pasted up over chaos...
"Memory is the grid of meaning we impose on the random and bewildering flux of the world. Memory is the line we pay out behind us as we travel through time - it is the clue, like Ariadne's, which means we do not lose our way.
"Memory is the lasso with which we capture the past and haul it from chaos towards us in nicely ordered sequences, like those of baroque keyboard music..Memory, origin of narrative; memory, barrier against oblivion; memory, repository of my being, those delicate filaments of myself I weave, in time into a spider's web to catch as much world in it as I can.
"In the midst of my self-spun web, there I can sit, in the serenity of my self-possession. Or so I would, if I could."
"First, we learn how to forget. Second, we forget how to speak; third, we cease to exist.
"Dedicated as he is to the dissolution of forms, [the Count] intends to erode my sense of being by equipping me with a multiplicity of beings, so that I confound myself with my own profusion of pasts, presents and futures.
"If only I could remember everything perfectly, just as it happened, then loaded with the ambivalent burden of my past, I should be free."
"The Snow Pavilion" and the third story, "The Quilt Maker" are less metaphysical, but adopt the structure of fairy tales more obviously than the first story.
The latter of these stories raises the question of autobiography again. The narrator mentions that she is "a skinny redhead", that she was "born and bred...in the Protestant north working-class tradition", and that she is now married to a house carpenter. She even refers to the middle-aged quilt maker of the story as "ma semblable [counterpart], ma soeur", who is "turning her face vigorously against the rocks and trees of the patient wilderness waiting around us." But then, Angela Carter might have considered any woman to be her counterpart or sister.
Reviews of the Individual Collections:
Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Black Venus
American Ghosts & Old World Wonders
January 20, 2020
The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter
The Erl-King lives by himself all alone in the heart of the wood in a house which has only one room. His house is made of sticks and stones and has grown a pelt of yellow lichen. Grass and weeds grow in the mossy roof... I found the Erl-King sitting on an ivy-covered stump winding all the birds in the wood to him on a diatomic spool of sound, one rising note, one falling note; such a sweet piercing call that down there came a soft, chirruping jostle of birds.
Angela Carter, who passed away in 1992, has been described as a mytho-maniac and a master of words. Her short stories, collected in this volume, are heavily focused on the supernatural. She often uses feminine protagonists living in dreamscape worlds of reality, fantasy, mysticism and mythology complemented with historical figures and anthropomorphic animals. She relies heavily on symbolism as the stories meander between fantasy and reality and probe both eroticism and the desserts of revenge.
Carter has a special gift for invoking imagery with her detailed descriptions. Many, and perhaps most, of her stories require extra effort on the part of the reader to understand what is going on. In these fantastical worlds she conjures there is rarely context. Her imagination runs wild and it can be difficult to keep up with her at times.
Here are my favorite stories. The Erl-King is a masterpiece.
1. Elegy for a Freelance
A team of modern day revolutionaries are holed up in a squalid apartment complex where our protagonist and the others have tied up the building owner and others and are torturing the owner to death. One of the other revolutionaries has an infant but wants to escape before the authorities arrive. We soon hear the military helicopters approaching.
2. The Erl-King
The Erl-King legend from the 18th century involves a malevolent man or beast of nature who lives in the forest and lures children. In Carter’s version he lures beautiful birds to his cabin. Some of these birds have child-like and human attributes. He keeps them in cages and assaults them. One of the captured birds, actually a young lady, devises a plan to exact revenge. She plans on strangling the Erl-King with his own long braided hair. This is Carter showcasing her greatest gift — morphing and modernizing fairy tales in macabre ways.
3. Our Lady of the Massacre
It’s the 17th century in Virginia. An indentured servant wanders away to live with Native Americans that the settlers misname the Algonquins. She is accepted into the tribe and lives with them for many seasons and learns their ways. She tries to convince them to move west away from the trouble and the tribe does not heed her advice. They are soon massacred by the settlers but her life is spared. She is reluctantly taken back into the community but the women are suspicious that she actually deserted but the men have no interest in persecuting her. Perhaps the most realistic of the stories in this book.
4. Peter and the Wolf
My second favorite story. Flips the story on its head. Carter imagines a situation where a family lives in the Swiss alps and one night during a winter storm a pack of wolves kill a son and his wife but their infant girl is nowhere to be found. Years later a cousin sees a wolf pack trying to eat his goats. One of the wolves looks like a human on all fours. The grandmother is determined to capture the wolf who she believes is her grand-daughter.
5. Overture and Incidental Music
This is an erotic take on Shakespeare’s play ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ where the fairies and characters behave in naughty and inappropriate ways.
4 stars. All of Carter’s stories are creative and some are beautifully crafted. Margaret Atwood called the book ‘An amazing plum pudding’. An apt description.
The Erl-King lives by himself all alone in the heart of the wood in a house which has only one room. His house is made of sticks and stones and has grown a pelt of yellow lichen. Grass and weeds grow in the mossy roof... I found the Erl-King sitting on an ivy-covered stump winding all the birds in the wood to him on a diatomic spool of sound, one rising note, one falling note; such a sweet piercing call that down there came a soft, chirruping jostle of birds.
Angela Carter, who passed away in 1992, has been described as a mytho-maniac and a master of words. Her short stories, collected in this volume, are heavily focused on the supernatural. She often uses feminine protagonists living in dreamscape worlds of reality, fantasy, mysticism and mythology complemented with historical figures and anthropomorphic animals. She relies heavily on symbolism as the stories meander between fantasy and reality and probe both eroticism and the desserts of revenge.
Carter has a special gift for invoking imagery with her detailed descriptions. Many, and perhaps most, of her stories require extra effort on the part of the reader to understand what is going on. In these fantastical worlds she conjures there is rarely context. Her imagination runs wild and it can be difficult to keep up with her at times.
Here are my favorite stories. The Erl-King is a masterpiece.
1. Elegy for a Freelance
A team of modern day revolutionaries are holed up in a squalid apartment complex where our protagonist and the others have tied up the building owner and others and are torturing the owner to death. One of the other revolutionaries has an infant but wants to escape before the authorities arrive. We soon hear the military helicopters approaching.
2. The Erl-King
The Erl-King legend from the 18th century involves a malevolent man or beast of nature who lives in the forest and lures children. In Carter’s version he lures beautiful birds to his cabin. Some of these birds have child-like and human attributes. He keeps them in cages and assaults them. One of the captured birds, actually a young lady, devises a plan to exact revenge. She plans on strangling the Erl-King with his own long braided hair. This is Carter showcasing her greatest gift — morphing and modernizing fairy tales in macabre ways.
3. Our Lady of the Massacre
It’s the 17th century in Virginia. An indentured servant wanders away to live with Native Americans that the settlers misname the Algonquins. She is accepted into the tribe and lives with them for many seasons and learns their ways. She tries to convince them to move west away from the trouble and the tribe does not heed her advice. They are soon massacred by the settlers but her life is spared. She is reluctantly taken back into the community but the women are suspicious that she actually deserted but the men have no interest in persecuting her. Perhaps the most realistic of the stories in this book.
4. Peter and the Wolf
My second favorite story. Flips the story on its head. Carter imagines a situation where a family lives in the Swiss alps and one night during a winter storm a pack of wolves kill a son and his wife but their infant girl is nowhere to be found. Years later a cousin sees a wolf pack trying to eat his goats. One of the wolves looks like a human on all fours. The grandmother is determined to capture the wolf who she believes is her grand-daughter.
5. Overture and Incidental Music
This is an erotic take on Shakespeare’s play ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ where the fairies and characters behave in naughty and inappropriate ways.
4 stars. All of Carter’s stories are creative and some are beautifully crafted. Margaret Atwood called the book ‘An amazing plum pudding’. An apt description.
October 29, 2011
If she were alive today, they would say, "Bad woman! Bad!" because of her lack of compromise on textual aesthetics. When she was alive, they said, "Bad woman! Bad!" because aesthetics of her characters. You can't just like Angela Carter. You can't say, "Oh! this was a good book..." You have say, "Even though I oppose the idea of marriage, I would wed this collection."
April 24, 2022
“…strive for something a touch more hard-edged, intentional, altogether less arty…”
Angela Carter mines the depths of human depravity in a manner that makes my beloved Shirley Jackson look like Mother Goose. In fact, many of her stories are familiar fairytales (e.g. Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.) that have been reimagined with blood and mayhem and debauchery.
“…this art, if viewed theologically, may, perhaps, be blasphemous.”
I can’t say that every story worked for me. A few of them were so fundamentally bizarre that even I, as sick and twisted as I am, came away wondering “what dafaq?” But even the off-target misses have an odd appeal. Carter infuses all of her stuff with a kind of feminist fortitude—Knights in Shining Armor and Prince Charmings need not apply—and that worked for me in a big way. 4 stars.
Angela Carter mines the depths of human depravity in a manner that makes my beloved Shirley Jackson look like Mother Goose. In fact, many of her stories are familiar fairytales (e.g. Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.) that have been reimagined with blood and mayhem and debauchery.
“…this art, if viewed theologically, may, perhaps, be blasphemous.”
I can’t say that every story worked for me. A few of them were so fundamentally bizarre that even I, as sick and twisted as I am, came away wondering “what dafaq?” But even the off-target misses have an odd appeal. Carter infuses all of her stuff with a kind of feminist fortitude—Knights in Shining Armor and Prince Charmings need not apply—and that worked for me in a big way. 4 stars.
April 27, 2012
Angela Carter is a phenomenal stylist, of this there can be no doubt. I truly enjoy her juxtaposition of the beautiful and the grotesque, often depicted in single sentences, so that one doesn't quite know whether to be smitten or disgusted. Many of her tales possess a sort of profound, gothic heaviness that occasionally appeals very much to my sensibilities.
It has to be said though that quite a few of the stories in this collection, especially some of the early ones, feel like writing exercises rather than actual tales. I also must warn that Carter's symbolism is often rather unsubtle and heavy-handed. Sad to say, but all the twisted fairy tales, awakening sexuality (often shown in terms of wolfen or beastly creatures), bloody roses and so on, become a little tedious after a while. Read a little bit at a time though, this huge book should provide many hours of pleasure, though the quality of the individual pieces is extremely variable. "The Bloody Chamber" is a famous example of Carter's writing, and it is a representation of her finest traits. The side-by-side depiction of the morbid and the lovely in this piece acquires an almost rhythmic, hypnotic cadence. I wasn't crazy about the ending though, in which a character we've never really met or heard a great deal about before shows up to "save the day", though again, this ending has much to do with Carter's intense and heavy use of symbolism, and is best understood in a rather non-realistic way.
It has to be said though that quite a few of the stories in this collection, especially some of the early ones, feel like writing exercises rather than actual tales. I also must warn that Carter's symbolism is often rather unsubtle and heavy-handed. Sad to say, but all the twisted fairy tales, awakening sexuality (often shown in terms of wolfen or beastly creatures), bloody roses and so on, become a little tedious after a while. Read a little bit at a time though, this huge book should provide many hours of pleasure, though the quality of the individual pieces is extremely variable. "The Bloody Chamber" is a famous example of Carter's writing, and it is a representation of her finest traits. The side-by-side depiction of the morbid and the lovely in this piece acquires an almost rhythmic, hypnotic cadence. I wasn't crazy about the ending though, in which a character we've never really met or heard a great deal about before shows up to "save the day", though again, this ending has much to do with Carter's intense and heavy use of symbolism, and is best understood in a rather non-realistic way.
July 30, 2014
I feel like Angela Carter's stories are a bit like really rich chocolate truffles. One or two at a time are wonderful but eating thirty in a row will just make you sick. I made the mistake of reading straight through these stories and I just got sick of them by the end. Some of them were good, others not really at all. And some I'm not sure should really be qualified as stories since they seemed to be more thoughts or essays. There was also a lot of sex which got to be ridiculous (with people, with animals, with fruit...). Ultimately, I wasn't that impressed with Carter as a writer.
April 13, 2022
Cuando se da al preciosismo extremadamente barroco y culto, experimentando con el lenguaje, la estructura y el argumento, los cuentos son algo así como las espesas volutas de un fumador de opio, cuesta seguir sus evoluciones sobre el papel y me he encontrado leyendo en diagonal más cuentos de lo que me gustaría reconocer. Cuando ese virtuosismo estético se encuentra al servicio de un argumento inteligible y estructurado de un modo más convencional bajo el que resuena la voz del inconsciente, se produce un efecto casi sobrenatural, una iluminación espiritual a la que se llega a través de lo carnal y le sale "La cámara sangrienta", que estoy de acuerdo con Rushdie, es su obra maestra. También resultan valiosos algunos cuentos de "Venus Negra", como "Nuestra Señora de la Masacre" y los perfiles biográficos de Poe, Lizzie Borden y Jeanne Duval. Y de los que desconocía, me han gustado los ambientados en Japón y su conflictiva relación emocional con su amante japonés, y, sobre todo, el relato final, "La cosedora de retales" un relato sobre la vejez y el paso del tiempo en el que la cotidianeidad de la vida se burla de las tópicas y melancólicas afectaciones literarias que suelen revolotear alrededor de estos dos temas.
July 23, 2018
A collection of all of Angela Carter's tales.
Each one of these stories is so dense as to be a novel packed up in a portmanteau. To unpack them is a great deal of work. For example, in order to understand the John Ford story, you have to know that there was both a director of Westerns named John Ford, and a playwright around Shakespeare's time named John Ford. Or at least be willing to stop and research same.
I can't give these five stars--the three unpublished stories at the end made me realize that she probably edited all her stories practically to death to make them that dense--but when I step back from the actual marks on the paper, the tales she's telling are wonderful, fascinating, and inventive. I just wish she'd told them at their natural length.
Each one of these stories is so dense as to be a novel packed up in a portmanteau. To unpack them is a great deal of work. For example, in order to understand the John Ford story, you have to know that there was both a director of Westerns named John Ford, and a playwright around Shakespeare's time named John Ford. Or at least be willing to stop and research same.
I can't give these five stars--the three unpublished stories at the end made me realize that she probably edited all her stories practically to death to make them that dense--but when I step back from the actual marks on the paper, the tales she's telling are wonderful, fascinating, and inventive. I just wish she'd told them at their natural length.
January 7, 2008
This is a complete collection of Carter’s excellent short from her sadly short career. Her work takes stock imagery of our imagination (legends and historical figures) and plunges it into her surreal and gothic imagination and re-imagines, demythologizes, or makes it utterly unrecognizable. Resembling the work of Borges, Dineson, Brothers Grimm, Burroughs, Hoffman, and Poe but still really being unique and in her own voice. Highlights include “Loves of Lady Purple”, “The Tiger Bride”, “Fall Rivers Axe Murders”, “Alice in Prague, or the Curious Room”, “Cabinet of Edgar Allen Poe” and many more.
November 12, 2021
Angela Carter fue una periodista, guionista, traductora y escritora británica.
En esta compilación de cuentos plasma varias situaciones y personajes decadentes, así como los más bajos instintos humanos, que en ocasiones resultan incómodos, de tan crudos y terroríficos que son.
La prosa de Carter te hará escudriñar más allá de lo que describe en sus relatos, definitivamente no te dejará indiferente.
En esta compilación de cuentos plasma varias situaciones y personajes decadentes, así como los más bajos instintos humanos, que en ocasiones resultan incómodos, de tan crudos y terroríficos que son.
La prosa de Carter te hará escudriñar más allá de lo que describe en sus relatos, definitivamente no te dejará indiferente.
December 21, 2014
More people need to know about Angela Carter. There are several reasons for this- she did dark and sexual fairy tales before they were cool and better than anyone else has, she wrote a nonfiction coherant analysis of the Marquis de Sade’s writing in relation to feminism that wasn’t just throwing up her hands and giving up, she blurred the lines of magical realism in a manner comparable to Borges- but an incentive I’d like to add is that she’s one of the best writers of gothic short stories I’ve ever found.
Her most famous work is The Bloody Chamber, the aforementioned fairy tale collection (the movie that was loosely based on it is The Company of Wolves, and I urge you all to watch it,) but I’d recommend you get Burning Your Boats, which collects all her short fiction. The fairy tales are there, as well as historical fantasy, deadly puppet-women, sex comedies, werewolves, vampires, sinister circuses, days in the life of Lizzie Borden, and a hauntingly grotesque take on 120 Days of Sodom from the victims’ point of view. Her work isn’t for the faint of heart (or, at times, for those impatient with whimsy) but I’m dying to make more people as in love with her as I am.
Her most famous work is The Bloody Chamber, the aforementioned fairy tale collection (the movie that was loosely based on it is The Company of Wolves, and I urge you all to watch it,) but I’d recommend you get Burning Your Boats, which collects all her short fiction. The fairy tales are there, as well as historical fantasy, deadly puppet-women, sex comedies, werewolves, vampires, sinister circuses, days in the life of Lizzie Borden, and a hauntingly grotesque take on 120 Days of Sodom from the victims’ point of view. Her work isn’t for the faint of heart (or, at times, for those impatient with whimsy) but I’m dying to make more people as in love with her as I am.
March 19, 2009
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Why am I only discovering Angela Carter now? Life so sucks.
August 26, 2019
‘Memory, origin of narrative; memory, barrier against oblivion; memory, repository of my being, those delicate filaments of myself I weave, in time into a spider’s web to catch as much world in it as I can.’
At once exquisite and appalling, Carter is one of my favourite writers, truly. She’s dark, she’s disturbing, twisted, shocking and sensual. But for me, this bindup doesn’t showcase her searing talent in its entirety. Whilst The Bloody Chamber and Black Venus are Carter at her brutal best, the other collections dragged the overall rating down with a vengeance; Fireworks being the primary culprit.
For all that I love Carter’s deeply disturbing stories, I found Fireworks thoroughly disappointing. The stories are more repulsive than they are compelling or sensual and in many cases, far more preachy and convoluted than lyrical. The instalments become increasingly outlandish, cryptic (Reflections, I’m looking at you) and downright psychedelic. The majority are unsatisfying and don't seem to achieve anything. My impression was that the stories were bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre - perhaps even just for shits and giggles. The majority were too indistinguishable to be memorable; A Souvenir of Japan, The Smile of Winter and Flesh and the Mirror told more or less the exact same story. Granted, others weren't entirely forgettable - but completely for the wrong reasons. I did however enjoy The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter and Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest, mainly because the ambience evoked was magical and utterly tangible, incest and rape aside.
Gloriously dark and transgressive, The Bloody Chamber is an astounding collection. Although there is some dispute as to whether this merits a ‘feminist’ status or not, I’m strongly in the affirmative. The stories are certainly not feminist in the traditional/stereotypical perception; Carter’s focus is subverting the power dynamics within primarily sexual relationships. The heroines are often the ones to instigate the sexual encounter and champion the liberating and transformative power of indulging in passion. The Bloody Chamber itself is by far the jewel of the collection, but each individual story is charged with sexual energy and stunning imagery - exquisitely rendered.
Black Venus focuses primarily on the unheard perspectives of the women behind famous names. Jeanne Duval , Baudelaire’s mistress, for example. Or Carter’s wonderful take on Poe’s childhood within a theatre company and his relationship with his mother. The collection also showcases Carter at her bawdy best; her delineation of the sexual escapades of the fairies and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is poised somewhere between the exquisite presentation of sex in The Bloody Chamber and the somewhat vulgar and disquieting version within Fireworks.
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders as well as the earlier works and uncollected stories were mediocre. Meh is all I have to say about those - but I invest that single syllable with religious disappointment.
Overall, this fell flat for me. Reading the stories collected together dampened the experience, highlighting the splendour of a select few but crucially concentrating the disappointment of the remainder. If you are a Carter aficionado, by all means give it a go. If you are however just looking for some flipping good short stories, reach for The Bloody Chamber and/or Black Venus. Forget you ever heard of the other collections.
At once exquisite and appalling, Carter is one of my favourite writers, truly. She’s dark, she’s disturbing, twisted, shocking and sensual. But for me, this bindup doesn’t showcase her searing talent in its entirety. Whilst The Bloody Chamber and Black Venus are Carter at her brutal best, the other collections dragged the overall rating down with a vengeance; Fireworks being the primary culprit.
For all that I love Carter’s deeply disturbing stories, I found Fireworks thoroughly disappointing. The stories are more repulsive than they are compelling or sensual and in many cases, far more preachy and convoluted than lyrical. The instalments become increasingly outlandish, cryptic (Reflections, I’m looking at you) and downright psychedelic. The majority are unsatisfying and don't seem to achieve anything. My impression was that the stories were bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre - perhaps even just for shits and giggles. The majority were too indistinguishable to be memorable; A Souvenir of Japan, The Smile of Winter and Flesh and the Mirror told more or less the exact same story. Granted, others weren't entirely forgettable - but completely for the wrong reasons. I did however enjoy The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter and Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest, mainly because the ambience evoked was magical and utterly tangible, incest and rape aside.
Gloriously dark and transgressive, The Bloody Chamber is an astounding collection. Although there is some dispute as to whether this merits a ‘feminist’ status or not, I’m strongly in the affirmative. The stories are certainly not feminist in the traditional/stereotypical perception; Carter’s focus is subverting the power dynamics within primarily sexual relationships. The heroines are often the ones to instigate the sexual encounter and champion the liberating and transformative power of indulging in passion. The Bloody Chamber itself is by far the jewel of the collection, but each individual story is charged with sexual energy and stunning imagery - exquisitely rendered.
Black Venus focuses primarily on the unheard perspectives of the women behind famous names. Jeanne Duval , Baudelaire’s mistress, for example. Or Carter’s wonderful take on Poe’s childhood within a theatre company and his relationship with his mother. The collection also showcases Carter at her bawdy best; her delineation of the sexual escapades of the fairies and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is poised somewhere between the exquisite presentation of sex in The Bloody Chamber and the somewhat vulgar and disquieting version within Fireworks.
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders as well as the earlier works and uncollected stories were mediocre. Meh is all I have to say about those - but I invest that single syllable with religious disappointment.
Overall, this fell flat for me. Reading the stories collected together dampened the experience, highlighting the splendour of a select few but crucially concentrating the disappointment of the remainder. If you are a Carter aficionado, by all means give it a go. If you are however just looking for some flipping good short stories, reach for The Bloody Chamber and/or Black Venus. Forget you ever heard of the other collections.
August 27, 2013
Angela Carter was indeed the master of the short story during her short life, and I wished that I had read her stories earlier in my writing career for there is much to learn in her approach to the craft. In this collected work that compiles all of her short writing over a 30-year period, we are introduced to a variety of styles, subjects, arrangements, voices and situations that led me to crown her the "magician of the short story."
Gothic is the overaching mood of her stories, but that is the only connection. The subject matter roams over a wide convas, from biblical tales to fairy tales like The Beauty & the Beast and Puss in Boots, with Carter placing her unique spin on them. In fact, we get two cuts of the B&B story, one in which the Beauty's kiss turns Beast into a human, and the other in which Beast kisses Beauty and turns her into an animal! The content then moves to the biographical where we get versions of the lives of Baudelaire and Edgar Alan Poe. The fusion of play, screenplay and prose is skillfully woven in the story of the movie director John Ford and his namesake, a Jacobean period dramatist. The most chilling pieces were the two stories on Lizzie Borden: an abject lesson that you can convey terror without spilling a drop of blood.
Throughout, Carter evokes the senses, smell in particular, and her tendency to veer off into the macabre gives us liberal doses of sweat, vomit, feces and blood, all a bit much, but to be expected from a writer of gothic tales.
The research behind her writing, particularly in the historical pieces, is evident, as her fiction is always a spin off from the real story, and given the wide canvas, I suspect Carter actually enjoyed ferreting out the real stories before fictionalizing them, lending texture where the purely biographical is unable to.
And, as if to foreshadow her own early demise, there is the spectre of the grim reaper, a faceless man, who appears in many of her stories, blending in with the Gothic, but also making one wonder if the author suspected her own exit and pumped out these stories at a furious pace, leaving valuable lessons for practitioners of the short story to follow.
Gothic is the overaching mood of her stories, but that is the only connection. The subject matter roams over a wide convas, from biblical tales to fairy tales like The Beauty & the Beast and Puss in Boots, with Carter placing her unique spin on them. In fact, we get two cuts of the B&B story, one in which the Beauty's kiss turns Beast into a human, and the other in which Beast kisses Beauty and turns her into an animal! The content then moves to the biographical where we get versions of the lives of Baudelaire and Edgar Alan Poe. The fusion of play, screenplay and prose is skillfully woven in the story of the movie director John Ford and his namesake, a Jacobean period dramatist. The most chilling pieces were the two stories on Lizzie Borden: an abject lesson that you can convey terror without spilling a drop of blood.
Throughout, Carter evokes the senses, smell in particular, and her tendency to veer off into the macabre gives us liberal doses of sweat, vomit, feces and blood, all a bit much, but to be expected from a writer of gothic tales.
The research behind her writing, particularly in the historical pieces, is evident, as her fiction is always a spin off from the real story, and given the wide canvas, I suspect Carter actually enjoyed ferreting out the real stories before fictionalizing them, lending texture where the purely biographical is unable to.
And, as if to foreshadow her own early demise, there is the spectre of the grim reaper, a faceless man, who appears in many of her stories, blending in with the Gothic, but also making one wonder if the author suspected her own exit and pumped out these stories at a furious pace, leaving valuable lessons for practitioners of the short story to follow.
February 11, 2022
♥️7 de corazones♥️
Quemar las naves recoge todos cuentos escritos por Angela Carter. De calidad, longitud y temas variopintos, los cuentos incluidos en esta antología son obra de una escritora de claras posturas políticas, sociales y estéticas.
La sexualidad, el género, la transgresión, el psicoanálisis, el patriarcado, Shakespeare, Hollywood, la militancia, etc., todos temas carterianos que al ser puestos bajo la mirada destructora de Ángela (si me permite tutearla), son reformados en pequeñas creaciones: mitad caricaturas, mitad ensayos "académicos".
A pesar de haber algunos cuentos no tan logrados (en mi opinión), el grueso del libro es imperdible. Si lo tuyo es el artefacto literario, con muchos moños, cintas, adornos, plumas, confeti, serpentinas, maquillaje, máscaras; este es tu mole.
Lo recomiendo con festividad.
Y ya está.
Quemar las naves recoge todos cuentos escritos por Angela Carter. De calidad, longitud y temas variopintos, los cuentos incluidos en esta antología son obra de una escritora de claras posturas políticas, sociales y estéticas.
La sexualidad, el género, la transgresión, el psicoanálisis, el patriarcado, Shakespeare, Hollywood, la militancia, etc., todos temas carterianos que al ser puestos bajo la mirada destructora de Ángela (si me permite tutearla), son reformados en pequeñas creaciones: mitad caricaturas, mitad ensayos "académicos".
A pesar de haber algunos cuentos no tan logrados (en mi opinión), el grueso del libro es imperdible. Si lo tuyo es el artefacto literario, con muchos moños, cintas, adornos, plumas, confeti, serpentinas, maquillaje, máscaras; este es tu mole.
Lo recomiendo con festividad.
Y ya está.
May 19, 2020
* La cámara sangrienta 5 estrellas / 23-04-2020
* El beso 2 estrellas / 18-05-2020
* El beso 2 estrellas / 18-05-2020
August 31, 2020
La prosa de
Angela CARTER
es demasiada exquisita como para leer sus libros de un tirón. No están escritos al ritmo de un best-seller, sino que han sido destilados lenta, suavemente, para conseguir la esencia de su personalidad, de su modo de ver y hacer las cosas. Es por eso que elegí leer esta colección de cuentos avanzando solamente uno al día, para saborearlo, disfrutarlo como si fuera una copita del mejor ron añejo venido de Centroamérica.
Entre temas tan variados que se acumulan en este tomo, sin duda los cuentos que más me gustaron son aquellos que reinterpretan las fábulas y leyendas populares europeas ( La Cámara Sangrienta ), pero disfruté todos los demás, incluso lo que no entendí (por ejemplo, Una fábula victoriana).
Como siempre que lo merecen, mención especialísima para los traductores, Rubén Martín Giráldez y Jesús Gómez Gutiérrez. Sin sus abundantes notas a pie de página aclarando muchas referencias literarias y cinematográficas, habría pasado por alto muchos detalles que sin duda enriquecen la lectura.
Entre temas tan variados que se acumulan en este tomo, sin duda los cuentos que más me gustaron son aquellos que reinterpretan las fábulas y leyendas populares europeas ( La Cámara Sangrienta ), pero disfruté todos los demás, incluso lo que no entendí (por ejemplo, Una fábula victoriana).
Como siempre que lo merecen, mención especialísima para los traductores, Rubén Martín Giráldez y Jesús Gómez Gutiérrez. Sin sus abundantes notas a pie de página aclarando muchas referencias literarias y cinematográficas, habría pasado por alto muchos detalles que sin duda enriquecen la lectura.
August 4, 2019
Este ha sido un libro buscado y muy querido tras su recomendación por dos personas y su bellísima edición. Y ha sido buscado por su edición porque, aunque lo tenían en múltiples librerías que solían ser de confianza, el material de la sobrecubierta es poroso y atrae el polvo y la suciedad sin aparente posibilidad de limpieza, haciendo un efecto horrible. Del chocolate 99% durante una ola de calor mejor no hablo, porque menudo disgusto.
En cuanto al contenido, no tenía claro a qué me iba a enfrentar, pero menudo bofetón. Sabía que eran cuentos, sabía que algunos eran reconstrucciones de algunos clásicos, pero poco más. Y encontré arabismos, orientalismos, leyendas americanas, personajes conocidos reconvertidos mediante la escatología (y no me refiero al estudio del fin de los tiempos), y un sinfín de elementos que espero reventaran las mentes de los lectores de su tiempo y les convirtieran en personas mejores. O en monstruos, dado que no entendería la posibilidad de quedarse en un término medio tras estas lecturas.
Estas lecturas que, por otra parte, no podrían ser comida rápida aunque se quisiera. Miren, a mí me pasa una cosa horrible: compro muchos libros y, a partir de cierta altura de la pila de la mesa, tiendo a acelerar mi velocidad de lectura por algún mecanismo de presión mental. Y claro, las imágenes no se forman con la misma fuerza ni mantienes la misma atención por mucho que quieras, y el producto final queda mayormente despojado de su poder. ¡Pero aquí es imposible! Es una forma de escribir tan barroca, tan agobiantemente descriptiva (hay un párrafo en la página 476 que formará parte del Olimpo de la escritura para siempre), con un ritmo tan marcado y opresivo, que la única forma de degustar estos cuentos es con tranquilidad. Es más, yo diría que la manera correcta sería, siempre bajo supervisión sanitaria (psicológica o psiquiátrica), un cuento al día con lápiz en la mano para subrayar y tomar notas, y luego un ratito de meditación sobre lo que se ha leído, que a veces resultará surrealista (porque puede que lo sea) y otras sencillamente demoledor.
Demoledora también la labor de los traductores, por lo dicho y por la labor de documentación. Sin sus notas a pie de página aclarando ciertas referencias bíblicas, literarias y cinematográficas, me hubiera sido imposible comprender la grandeza de lo escrito.
No sé si quedarán autoras como esta, pero me encantaría conocerlas y devorarles el cerebro. Metafóricamente, quiero decir. Siempre metafóricamente.
En cuanto al contenido, no tenía claro a qué me iba a enfrentar, pero menudo bofetón. Sabía que eran cuentos, sabía que algunos eran reconstrucciones de algunos clásicos, pero poco más. Y encontré arabismos, orientalismos, leyendas americanas, personajes conocidos reconvertidos mediante la escatología (y no me refiero al estudio del fin de los tiempos), y un sinfín de elementos que espero reventaran las mentes de los lectores de su tiempo y les convirtieran en personas mejores. O en monstruos, dado que no entendería la posibilidad de quedarse en un término medio tras estas lecturas.
Estas lecturas que, por otra parte, no podrían ser comida rápida aunque se quisiera. Miren, a mí me pasa una cosa horrible: compro muchos libros y, a partir de cierta altura de la pila de la mesa, tiendo a acelerar mi velocidad de lectura por algún mecanismo de presión mental. Y claro, las imágenes no se forman con la misma fuerza ni mantienes la misma atención por mucho que quieras, y el producto final queda mayormente despojado de su poder. ¡Pero aquí es imposible! Es una forma de escribir tan barroca, tan agobiantemente descriptiva (hay un párrafo en la página 476 que formará parte del Olimpo de la escritura para siempre), con un ritmo tan marcado y opresivo, que la única forma de degustar estos cuentos es con tranquilidad. Es más, yo diría que la manera correcta sería, siempre bajo supervisión sanitaria (psicológica o psiquiátrica), un cuento al día con lápiz en la mano para subrayar y tomar notas, y luego un ratito de meditación sobre lo que se ha leído, que a veces resultará surrealista (porque puede que lo sea) y otras sencillamente demoledor.
Demoledora también la labor de los traductores, por lo dicho y por la labor de documentación. Sin sus notas a pie de página aclarando ciertas referencias bíblicas, literarias y cinematográficas, me hubiera sido imposible comprender la grandeza de lo escrito.
No sé si quedarán autoras como esta, pero me encantaría conocerlas y devorarles el cerebro. Metafóricamente, quiero decir. Siempre metafóricamente.
September 16, 2021
It is very rare for me to prefer the short stories of an author to their longer work, but not even 20% into this, and I think that is the case with Angela Carter. The stories are in chronological order, so I have only read her earliest work, and already appreciating them so much, I have slowed my reading pace down accordingly.
I'll review a few of the best ones as I get through it...
The Loves of Lady Purple
This is the sort of classic horror story the once I read, I will certainly never forget.
A Japanese puppeteer travels to a superstitious Transylvanian town
Using his finely-crafted marionettes, her performs a grand play about a femme fatale with the name of Lady Purple. Despite the language barrier, the villagers follow the story and are entranced and quite frightened.
Carter's descriptions bring the marionettes to life, almost as if you are part of the audience.
Flesh and the Mirror about a young female traveller who arrives in Tokyo to find the person she is due to meet is no longer there. I suspect this is auto-biographical.
Here’s a quote I really like, reminding me of my own travel when much younger..
The Smile of Winter in which an unnamed narrator has lost her lover and is living alone by the sea. But though she sees her situation positively, and even with a touch of romance..
In Master Carter portrays a very unpleasant hunter who travels to the Amazon rainforest and purchases a female slave to accompany him on his travels and who he can abuse at will.
This is a dark fable with only these two characters. Written in the 1970s this is a story of colonial exploitation, a hatred of natural beauty and tranquility, and how and the fabrication of a killer.
I've just reached the end of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories section of the book and I can say that this is some of the best horror writing - correct that, writing - that I have ever read. I hugely enjoyed it.
Rather than comment on the quite excellent title story, as it has been much commented on, I will mention two lesser know stories..
The Lady of the House of Love, or Vampirella, as the stage play it was based on was called, and loosely based on Sleeping Beauty. A while ago I rode my bike, alone, through the Carpathian mountains. I asked The Guardian's TLS (of which I was a contibutor) for suggestions of local literature, and got some great stuff, which I read while I was there. But.. nobody recommended this.
It is about a solitary cyclist riding most likely the same route I did. He stops at an old village fountain to refresh himself, as I often did, and is approached by a mute, but friendly old woman who beckons him to a mansion.
This is the home of The Countess, a lone vampire since a priest killed her father, Nosferatu, when she was a child, looked after by the old mute Governess, who lets her out at night to feed.
Wolf Alice, which is based around the Wolf Boy story of a child raised by wolves.
Even though she is physically a woman, "Nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf"; she runs on all fours, is nocturnal, howls rather than speaks, and does not wear clothes. What distinguishes Wolf-Alice most from other humans is the fact that she is unaware of her own mortality. Peasants discover Wolf-Alice sleeping next to her wolf mother, whom they shot to death. Once they realise she is human, they bring her to live in a convent.
Carter uses elements from Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast, but not so obviously. It is the girl's emerging adolescence that see Carter at her best here, as her awareness of being human begins to emerge.
I'll review a few of the best ones as I get through it...
The Loves of Lady Purple
This is the sort of classic horror story the once I read, I will certainly never forget.
A Japanese puppeteer travels to a superstitious Transylvanian town
where they wreathed suicides with garlic, pierced them through the heart with stakes and buried them at crossroads.
Using his finely-crafted marionettes, her performs a grand play about a femme fatale with the name of Lady Purple. Despite the language barrier, the villagers follow the story and are entranced and quite frightened.
Carter's descriptions bring the marionettes to life, almost as if you are part of the audience.
Flesh and the Mirror about a young female traveller who arrives in Tokyo to find the person she is due to meet is no longer there. I suspect this is auto-biographical.
Here’s a quote I really like, reminding me of my own travel when much younger..
Random chance operates in relation to these existential lacunae; one tumbles down them when, for the time being, due to hunger, despair, sleeplessness, hallucination or those accidental-on-purpose misreading of train timetables and airline schedules that produce margins of empty time, one is lost. One is at the mercy of events. That is why I like to be a foreigner; I travel only for the insecurity. But I did not know that, then.
The Smile of Winter in which an unnamed narrator has lost her lover and is living alone by the sea. But though she sees her situation positively, and even with a touch of romance..
I collect driftwood and set it up among the pine trees in picturesque attitudes on the edge of the beach and then I strike a picturesque attitude myself beside them as I watch the constantly agitated waves, for here we all strike picturesque attitudes and that is why we are so beautiful.
In Master Carter portrays a very unpleasant hunter who travels to the Amazon rainforest and purchases a female slave to accompany him on his travels and who he can abuse at will.
This is a dark fable with only these two characters. Written in the 1970s this is a story of colonial exploitation, a hatred of natural beauty and tranquility, and how and the fabrication of a killer.
I've just reached the end of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories section of the book and I can say that this is some of the best horror writing - correct that, writing - that I have ever read. I hugely enjoyed it.
Rather than comment on the quite excellent title story, as it has been much commented on, I will mention two lesser know stories..
The Lady of the House of Love, or Vampirella, as the stage play it was based on was called, and loosely based on Sleeping Beauty. A while ago I rode my bike, alone, through the Carpathian mountains. I asked The Guardian's TLS (of which I was a contibutor) for suggestions of local literature, and got some great stuff, which I read while I was there. But.. nobody recommended this.
It is about a solitary cyclist riding most likely the same route I did. He stops at an old village fountain to refresh himself, as I often did, and is approached by a mute, but friendly old woman who beckons him to a mansion.
This is the home of The Countess, a lone vampire since a priest killed her father, Nosferatu, when she was a child, looked after by the old mute Governess, who lets her out at night to feed.
Wolf Alice, which is based around the Wolf Boy story of a child raised by wolves.
Even though she is physically a woman, "Nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf"; she runs on all fours, is nocturnal, howls rather than speaks, and does not wear clothes. What distinguishes Wolf-Alice most from other humans is the fact that she is unaware of her own mortality. Peasants discover Wolf-Alice sleeping next to her wolf mother, whom they shot to death. Once they realise she is human, they bring her to live in a convent.
Carter uses elements from Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast, but not so obviously. It is the girl's emerging adolescence that see Carter at her best here, as her awareness of being human begins to emerge.
July 10, 2024
"I speak as if he had no secrets from me. Well, then, you must realise that I was suffering from love and I knew him as intimately as I knew my own image in a mirror. In other words, I knew him only in relation to myself."
April 28, 2018
Adoro a Angela Carter. Me ha gustado especialmente la colección "Fantasmas americanos y maravillas del viejo mundo" (1993), donde disecciona mitos populares (cuadros, cuentos infantiles, películas, leyendas urbanas...) desde su mirada perturbadora y feminista. Algunos relatos, como 'El barco fantasam. Un cuento de Navidad´ recuerdan a American Gods y en otros se acerca más a Mitologías, pero ya le gustaría a Barthes.
May 11, 2012
I really should have put a review on each of the collections in this omnibus separately. But, in my eagerness, I neglected to do so and now am writing one for the omnibus as a whole, since I can't help but see them in relation to each other.
I love how the stories are arranged in more or less chronological order. It really allows one to see how Carter's style improved and evolved over time. The first collection, Fireworks, is by far the weakest of the four and that is in part due to Carter struggling to find out exactly what her style is.
Then you have The Bloody Chamber, which is in its own way evolving even during the collection. The stories in the beginning are more straightforward fairy tale retellings - very little changed, no real motivations or choices added, but still managing to make me think of the stories in a different way. But by the end of the collection, Carter has added in the feminist twists that she is so famous for.
It makes me think of the essay about McKillip in Fairy Tales Re-Imagined, where it's argued that choices were what differentiated the later Beauty from the early Beauty and were what allowed her to break free of the set fairy tale narrative. By the end of the collection, her characters are making their own choices, though in many ways those choices do still seem inevitable.
Next up is Saints and Strangers, which was my favorite collection of the set. There are re-tellings here - but they're not re-tellings of fairy tales, but of other stories and real people. What exactly was Lizzy Borden's motivation that morning? Why did Edgar Allen Poe write as he did? What was the story behind Oberon and Titania's estrangement in Midsummer Night's Dream? Stylistically, its much improved from Fireworks and even slightly better than The Bloody Chamber.
The last is American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, which is a mix of fairy tale retellings, other story retellings, and non-retellings. I did love these as well, and would rank it just slightly behind The Bloody Chamber.
I love how the stories are arranged in more or less chronological order. It really allows one to see how Carter's style improved and evolved over time. The first collection, Fireworks, is by far the weakest of the four and that is in part due to Carter struggling to find out exactly what her style is.
Then you have The Bloody Chamber, which is in its own way evolving even during the collection. The stories in the beginning are more straightforward fairy tale retellings - very little changed, no real motivations or choices added, but still managing to make me think of the stories in a different way. But by the end of the collection, Carter has added in the feminist twists that she is so famous for.
It makes me think of the essay about McKillip in Fairy Tales Re-Imagined, where it's argued that choices were what differentiated the later Beauty from the early Beauty and were what allowed her to break free of the set fairy tale narrative. By the end of the collection, her characters are making their own choices, though in many ways those choices do still seem inevitable.
Next up is Saints and Strangers, which was my favorite collection of the set. There are re-tellings here - but they're not re-tellings of fairy tales, but of other stories and real people. What exactly was Lizzy Borden's motivation that morning? Why did Edgar Allen Poe write as he did? What was the story behind Oberon and Titania's estrangement in Midsummer Night's Dream? Stylistically, its much improved from Fireworks and even slightly better than The Bloody Chamber.
The last is American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, which is a mix of fairy tale retellings, other story retellings, and non-retellings. I did love these as well, and would rank it just slightly behind The Bloody Chamber.
December 16, 2021
Pues ha sido un recorrido muy interesante. Antes de este libro había leído La cámara sangrienta y me había encantado.
Admito que este me ha parecido un libro muy dispar. Es decir, algunos relatos me dejaron muy fría, mientras que otros me dejaron flipando. Pero lo que está claro es que Angela Carter es un autora muy interesante y me alegro de que esté siendo recuperada en España con estas ediciones tan bonitas.
Mi top 10 de relatos sería este:
1. La cámara sangrienta > ¿qué decir de este? un retelling de Barba Azul de estilo gótico. Erótico y brutal.
2. Reflejos > El relato más fantástico y extravagante de la recopilación. Onírico casi.
3. La dama de la casa del amor > Vampírico, gótico, poético.
4. Lobalicia > La historia de una niña perdida en un bosque.
5. Venus negra > La historia de la amante de Baudelaire.
6. El gabinete de Edgar Allan Poe > Tan genial como un cuento del propio Poe.
7. La matanza a hachazos en Fall River > Narra los días previos al asesinato de una familia por parte de la hija menor. La atmósfera que crea Carter en este cuento me alucinó.
8. El mercader de sombras > Un homenaje/parodia a El crepúsculo de los dioses. Maravilloso.
9. El pabellón nevado > Un joven conquistador de señoras acaba en una casa misteriosa durante una tormenta de nieve. Puro estilo de historia de fantasmas.
10. La cosedora de retales > Este es el último relato del libro. Habla sobre la vida y la vejez, y me pareció muy tierno.
Admito que este me ha parecido un libro muy dispar. Es decir, algunos relatos me dejaron muy fría, mientras que otros me dejaron flipando. Pero lo que está claro es que Angela Carter es un autora muy interesante y me alegro de que esté siendo recuperada en España con estas ediciones tan bonitas.
Mi top 10 de relatos sería este:
1. La cámara sangrienta > ¿qué decir de este? un retelling de Barba Azul de estilo gótico. Erótico y brutal.
2. Reflejos > El relato más fantástico y extravagante de la recopilación. Onírico casi.
3. La dama de la casa del amor > Vampírico, gótico, poético.
4. Lobalicia > La historia de una niña perdida en un bosque.
5. Venus negra > La historia de la amante de Baudelaire.
6. El gabinete de Edgar Allan Poe > Tan genial como un cuento del propio Poe.
7. La matanza a hachazos en Fall River > Narra los días previos al asesinato de una familia por parte de la hija menor. La atmósfera que crea Carter en este cuento me alucinó.
8. El mercader de sombras > Un homenaje/parodia a El crepúsculo de los dioses. Maravilloso.
9. El pabellón nevado > Un joven conquistador de señoras acaba en una casa misteriosa durante una tormenta de nieve. Puro estilo de historia de fantasmas.
10. La cosedora de retales > Este es el último relato del libro. Habla sobre la vida y la vejez, y me pareció muy tierno.
May 20, 2024
Took me a hell of a long time to get through this one. Angela Carter is an acquired taste to say the least, responsible for some of the purplest prose published since the days of her idol, Edgar Allen Poe. Lush, gothic, grimly erotic retellings of fairy tales are what Carter is known for, and those make up the bulk of this collection, but she has other modes as well. There are (seemingly) autobiographical stories here, as well as straightforwardly realist pieces, like the poignant closer "The Quilt Maker" and I probably liked those the most. I admire her commitment to the dark fairy tale thing, even if it's not totally my jam. She writes those stories with a breathless passion and the savage, pretentious prolixity of a horny librarian. This can be embarrassing at times, but feels totally true to Carter's vision and voice. She is fully in her bag at all times, and it's hard not to be charmed by that.
Even though the quality of the stories in Burning Your Boats is all over the map, I don't regret reading it. Carter's is a vision that I'm glad exists, a grimy, sexy, lavish, rhapsodic take on the dark Gothic tradition. I'm sure she's had a huge influence (maybe indirectly) on a generation of dark fantasy authors that I'm not interested in reading, but I won't hold that against her—Angela Carter was the real deal. I'm not sure something like the Fables comics or the films of Guillermo del Toro would exist without her.
Even though the quality of the stories in Burning Your Boats is all over the map, I don't regret reading it. Carter's is a vision that I'm glad exists, a grimy, sexy, lavish, rhapsodic take on the dark Gothic tradition. I'm sure she's had a huge influence (maybe indirectly) on a generation of dark fantasy authors that I'm not interested in reading, but I won't hold that against her—Angela Carter was the real deal. I'm not sure something like the Fables comics or the films of Guillermo del Toro would exist without her.
July 30, 2015
I was destined to not like it. Beyond the fact that I rarely enjoy short stories, I also find Carter's style excessive, baroque, more imagery than story. I love minimalist writing and Carter is the at the absolute other end of the spectrum. I'm also burned out on fairy tale themes and most of these stories are evocative of them (if not outright reimaginings of classic tales).
Some of the stories I ended up skimming more than reading, I was that impatient with her writing. Normally, I'd give a book 1 star for that, but there were a handful of 3 star stories, mostly in The Bloody Chamber (which I read a couple years ago--note I did not read them again, they weren't *that* good) and Black Venus.
In all honesty, I only read this book because it's been sitting in my bookshelf unread for many years and I'm trying to pare down my collection. After reading The Bloody Chamber and a novel (Heroes and Villians) by Carter (neither of which did much for me), I knew this one would end up in the "donate" pile.
With that said, I still plan to read her novel Night at the Circus one day (won a James Tait Black), and her non-fiction work The Sadeian Woman, so I'm not completely done with Carter yet.
Some of the stories I ended up skimming more than reading, I was that impatient with her writing. Normally, I'd give a book 1 star for that, but there were a handful of 3 star stories, mostly in The Bloody Chamber (which I read a couple years ago--note I did not read them again, they weren't *that* good) and Black Venus.
In all honesty, I only read this book because it's been sitting in my bookshelf unread for many years and I'm trying to pare down my collection. After reading The Bloody Chamber and a novel (Heroes and Villians) by Carter (neither of which did much for me), I knew this one would end up in the "donate" pile.
With that said, I still plan to read her novel Night at the Circus one day (won a James Tait Black), and her non-fiction work The Sadeian Woman, so I'm not completely done with Carter yet.
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