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American Ghosts & Old World Wonders
A collection of short stories which tear through the archives of cinema, of art and of the subconscious. A young Lizzie Borden visits the circus; a pianist makes a Faustian pact in a fly-blown Southern brothel; and a transfigured Mary Magdalene steps out of the canvases of Donatello and de la Tour.
146 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Angela Carter
212 books3,722 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
April 30, 2023
This is a short stories collection which I definitely would revisit later on! Ms. Carter's love for fun fairs and freak shows(?) really does show in these short stories, and she did have an outstanding way to use these elements in her stories.
Edited@12/10/2022:
(1) I really, really like the Magic Bullet's retelling short story: Gun For the Devil.
(2) I finally started reading The Ghost Ship, it kinda reminds me a bit of American Gods.
(4) I am loving Carter's 'retelling' of Cinderella!!! Although she is called 'Ashputtle', I checked and turned out it's how the girl is called in the Brother Grimm version: https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/175/grimms...
I love how Ms. Carter analysed the fairytale, and of course, Ms. Carter wouldn't miss out all the bloody foot-cutting details from the story...
(4) Alice in Prague or the Curious Room
(5) The story about Dr. Dee and Alice and the curious room...I like the concept but the ending...I don't know how to make of it.
(6) I like the short essay she wrote about the image and myths about Mary Magdalene.
Edited@12/10/2022:
"What is the nature of the bond between us, between the Beast and Man? Let me tell you. It's fear, fear! Nothing but fear."
(1) I really, really like the Magic Bullet's retelling short story: Gun For the Devil.
(2) I finally started reading The Ghost Ship, it kinda reminds me a bit of American Gods.
(4) I am loving Carter's 'retelling' of Cinderella!!! Although she is called 'Ashputtle', I checked and turned out it's how the girl is called in the Brother Grimm version: https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/175/grimms...
I love how Ms. Carter analysed the fairytale, and of course, Ms. Carter wouldn't miss out all the bloody foot-cutting details from the story...
"She carries where, if she were a Virgin mother and not a sacred whore, she would rest her baby, not a living child but a mementomori, a skull."
(4) Alice in Prague or the Curious Room
"Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it."
(5) The story about Dr. Dee and Alice and the curious room...I like the concept but the ending...I don't know how to make of it.
(6) I like the short essay she wrote about the image and myths about Mary Magdalene.
September 16, 2023
Magical, as always, if somewhat uneven. And I read it with a definite lump in my throat, knowing that she prepared this volume for publication and then died of lung cancer aged only 51. Two stories ("Gun for the Devil" and "The Ghost Ships") were added after the fact by her editor(s), the latter not necessarily to the credit of the collection. Several of the early stories are heavy on plot and others lack one to the point of becoming either fever dreams or dissertations. But as always it was a joy to spend some time with Angie. Not only was this last of her short story collections to be published, it was the last one I had left to read.
Fun fact: Georges de la Tour's Magdalene with the Smoking Flame, featured in the last piece (as opposed to story), also makes an appearance in Disney's The Little Mermaid. Who knew?
Lizzie's Tiger - 4
John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore - 5
Gun for the Devil - 4
The Merchant of Shadows - 3
The Ghost Ships - 2
In Pantoland - 3
Ashputtle or The Mother's Ghost - 4
Alice in Prague or The Curious Room - 5
Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene - 4
Fun fact: Georges de la Tour's Magdalene with the Smoking Flame, featured in the last piece (as opposed to story), also makes an appearance in Disney's The Little Mermaid. Who knew?
Lizzie's Tiger - 4
John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore - 5
Gun for the Devil - 4
The Merchant of Shadows - 3
The Ghost Ships - 2
In Pantoland - 3
Ashputtle or The Mother's Ghost - 4
Alice in Prague or The Curious Room - 5
Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene - 4
November 5, 2018
My Before and After
Over a period of almost 20 years leading up to her death, Angela Carter wrote or published four volumes of short stories (this collection, the last, was published posthumously in 1993, a year after her death).
All four volumes plus various previously uncollected stories were published in “Burning Your Boats”.
I read and reviewed each separate collection chronologically, which was a great opportunity to observe the progression in her writing over this period.
Initially, Carter revived the structure of the traditional fairy tale by injecting into its form a narrative that reflected contemporary feminist concerns. In the process, she made explicit what was previously only implicit in the traditional fairy tale – the patriarchal foundation of the original tale.
In the middle of this period, she created her own tales and fashioned them in structures analogous to fairy tales.
Impressions on Various Narrative Vehicles
In this, the fourth volume, she advanced even further, by inventing narratives and placing them in more recent or newly appropriated literary structures:
“Lizzie’s Tiger” (a prequel to “The Fall River Axe Murders”);
“John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’" (a Jacobean tragedy reconceived as a western film);
“Gun for the Devil” (a western genre novel/story set in Vienna and a Mexican border town);
“The Merchant of Shadows” (a film student’s research into a film director and his lead actress widow that reads like (and could almost have become) a film noir murder mystery);
“The Ghost Ships” (a Christmas story that is more pagan than Christian);
“In Pantoland” (a fictionalised thesis on the sexual innuendo and explicitness of pantomime that reflects anthropological, carnivalesque and feminist interests);
“Ashputtle (or The Mother’s Ghost)" (three investigations into the mutilation of children);
“Alice in Prague” (a Freudian casebook inspired by an animated film made in "an age in love with wonders": "there's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: 'Where was I before I was born?'");
“Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene” (impressions on the portrayal of Mary Magdalene over time, including Georges De La Tour’s ‘The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame”):
Superficially, “In Pantoland” gives the impression that it's an unfinished sketch containing Carter’s notes to herself about the subject matter and style of her piece. However, she obviously felt it was suitable to offer to The Guarniad for inclusion in the issue published on Christmas Eve, 1991, just months before her death.
A Stranger Among Strangers
In "Lizzie's Tiger", Lizzie is attracted to a visiting circus, when she observes a poster showing the head of a tiger, but she cannot afford the entrance fee. For Lizzie, the circus "signifies a profane church." She identifies with the other children who surround the circus:
"She was a stranger among these strangers, for all here were those the mills had brought to town, the ones with different faces." They had come variously from Lancashire, Canada and Portugal. There is something exotic about the circus: "At sunset, the incomparably grave and massive light of New England acquires a monumental, a Roman sensuality" that derives from the unfamiliar, "a sense of profound strangeness."
It was then that, swept up in the crowd, "the devil got into Lizzie." She was accosted by a drunken man who tries to kiss her in return for a nickel. Soon she is persuaded to buy a ticket to see the tiger, which "walked up and down like Satan walking about the world and it burned...The tiger kept its head down; questing hither and thither though in quest of what might not be told."
Then it fell to its knees, subdued by Lizzie, "as if this little child of all the children in the world, might lead it towards a peaceable kingdom where it need not eat meat...It stopped roaring. Instead it started to emit a rattling purr."
'Tis Pity She's Your Sister
Johnny and Annie-Belle are brother and sister, though motherless:
This is the incest taboo raised and just as quickly shrugged off.
Later on, though, when Annie-Belle discovers she is pregnant, she confesses:
Banned Daemonology
In "Gun for the Devil", Carter contrasts the old and new worlds:
Superstition is always just beneath the surface.
Flesh Becomes Her
The HOLLYWOODLAND sign represents the Holy Grail to a young London film student, "a student of Light and Illusion," who describes himself as "the Innocent Abroad" and an "enchanted visitor", come to visit the septuagenarian widow of a famous director, Hank Mann, (formerly Heinrich von Mannheim), "the dark genius of the screen, the director with the occult touch, that neglected giant etc. etc. etc."
Just in case you're wondering, the Oscar-winning widow, though possessed of "some imperious arrogance...was no Gish, nor Brooks, nor Dietrich, nor Garbo, who all share the same gift, the ability to reveal otherness." Yet again, Carter is interested in the stranger, the exile, the abandoned, the rejected. The director's first wife had also been an actress, the star of Mannheim's "The Fall of the House of Usher", now lost, despite its interest to fans of Edgar Allan Poe.
The narrator, enchanted by the actress and her star quality, "assumed the stance of gigolo", in the manner of a private detective who gets too close to his female client. After three martinis, he acknowledges, "Yes, there was something undeniably erotic about it, although she was as old as the hills..." No wonder he mentions "Sunset Boulevard". "I must admit I fell into a great fear. I even thought they might have lured me here to murder me, this siren of the cinema and her weird acolyte."
Safely back in his apartment the next day, he reveals that "[I] grew glum to realise how peripheral I was."
The pupil in his study was no match for the secular gods and goddesses of the screen.
Dream, That Uncensorable State
The next story pits the liberty of the imagination against the constraints of Puritanism, as personalised by Cotton Mather:
It's the role of fiction, especially the carnivalesque festival of Angela Carter's pagan stories, to subvert Puritanism. The master of these revels was the Lord of Misrule himself, the clown prince of Old Christmas..."He is mirth, anarchy and terror...During the twelve days of Christmas, nothing is forbidden, everything is forgiven...The Romans called it Saturnalia, when all was topsy-turvy...A merry Christmas is Cotton Mather's worst nightmare."
The Infinite Riches of a Dirty Mind
Angela Carter deconstructs the commercial and cultural aspirations of Disneyland in "In Pantoland".
She then investigates the role that women play in Pantoland, "this rude femaleness...flirting, flattering, fluttering...in the most salacious manner...I have come back to earth and I feel randy!"
Then she recognises,
Angela Carter's short stories are truly excessive (they question and transcend social and literary boundaries), even transgressive, without being merely long and verbose. Her work is infinitely superior to the self-conscious pretence of the white male American post-modernists, even if, like Robert Coover, they purported to endorse her.
SOUNDTRACK:
Over a period of almost 20 years leading up to her death, Angela Carter wrote or published four volumes of short stories (this collection, the last, was published posthumously in 1993, a year after her death).
All four volumes plus various previously uncollected stories were published in “Burning Your Boats”.
I read and reviewed each separate collection chronologically, which was a great opportunity to observe the progression in her writing over this period.
Initially, Carter revived the structure of the traditional fairy tale by injecting into its form a narrative that reflected contemporary feminist concerns. In the process, she made explicit what was previously only implicit in the traditional fairy tale – the patriarchal foundation of the original tale.
In the middle of this period, she created her own tales and fashioned them in structures analogous to fairy tales.
Impressions on Various Narrative Vehicles
In this, the fourth volume, she advanced even further, by inventing narratives and placing them in more recent or newly appropriated literary structures:
“Lizzie’s Tiger” (a prequel to “The Fall River Axe Murders”);
“John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’" (a Jacobean tragedy reconceived as a western film);
“Gun for the Devil” (a western genre novel/story set in Vienna and a Mexican border town);
“The Merchant of Shadows” (a film student’s research into a film director and his lead actress widow that reads like (and could almost have become) a film noir murder mystery);
“The Ghost Ships” (a Christmas story that is more pagan than Christian);
“In Pantoland” (a fictionalised thesis on the sexual innuendo and explicitness of pantomime that reflects anthropological, carnivalesque and feminist interests);
“Ashputtle (or The Mother’s Ghost)" (three investigations into the mutilation of children);
“Alice in Prague” (a Freudian casebook inspired by an animated film made in "an age in love with wonders": "there's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: 'Where was I before I was born?'");
“Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene” (impressions on the portrayal of Mary Magdalene over time, including Georges De La Tour’s ‘The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame”):
Superficially, “In Pantoland” gives the impression that it's an unfinished sketch containing Carter’s notes to herself about the subject matter and style of her piece. However, she obviously felt it was suitable to offer to The Guarniad for inclusion in the issue published on Christmas Eve, 1991, just months before her death.
A Stranger Among Strangers
In "Lizzie's Tiger", Lizzie is attracted to a visiting circus, when she observes a poster showing the head of a tiger, but she cannot afford the entrance fee. For Lizzie, the circus "signifies a profane church." She identifies with the other children who surround the circus:
"She was a stranger among these strangers, for all here were those the mills had brought to town, the ones with different faces." They had come variously from Lancashire, Canada and Portugal. There is something exotic about the circus: "At sunset, the incomparably grave and massive light of New England acquires a monumental, a Roman sensuality" that derives from the unfamiliar, "a sense of profound strangeness."
It was then that, swept up in the crowd, "the devil got into Lizzie." She was accosted by a drunken man who tries to kiss her in return for a nickel. Soon she is persuaded to buy a ticket to see the tiger, which "walked up and down like Satan walking about the world and it burned...The tiger kept its head down; questing hither and thither though in quest of what might not be told."
Then it fell to its knees, subdued by Lizzie, "as if this little child of all the children in the world, might lead it towards a peaceable kingdom where it need not eat meat...It stopped roaring. Instead it started to emit a rattling purr."
'Tis Pity She's Your Sister
Johnny and Annie-Belle are brother and sister, though motherless:
"I imagine him with an intelligence nourished only by the black book of the father, and hence cruelly circumscribed, yet dense with allusion, seeing himself as a kind of Adam and she his unavoidable and irreplaceable Eve, the unique companion of the wilderness, although by their toil he knows they do not live in Eden and of the precise nature of the forbidden thing he remains in doubt...For surely it cannot be this? This bliss? Who could forbid such bliss! Was it bliss for her, too? Or was there more of love than pleasure in it? 'Look after your sister.' [his mother had said to him before she died.] But it was she who looked after him as soon as she knew how and pleasured him in the same spirit as she fed him."
This is the incest taboo raised and just as quickly shrugged off.
Later on, though, when Annie-Belle discovers she is pregnant, she confesses:
"Oh, Johnny, you knowed we did wrong."
Banned Daemonology
In "Gun for the Devil", Carter contrasts the old and new worlds:
"Out of the sandstorms, hallucinatory figures emerge and merge, figures of demons or gods not necessarily those of Europe. The unknown continent, the new world, issues forth its banned daemonology...The church seems to have disappeared."
Superstition is always just beneath the surface.
Flesh Becomes Her
The HOLLYWOODLAND sign represents the Holy Grail to a young London film student, "a student of Light and Illusion," who describes himself as "the Innocent Abroad" and an "enchanted visitor", come to visit the septuagenarian widow of a famous director, Hank Mann, (formerly Heinrich von Mannheim), "the dark genius of the screen, the director with the occult touch, that neglected giant etc. etc. etc."
"The denizens of these deeps...belong to no mythology but their weird own."
Just in case you're wondering, the Oscar-winning widow, though possessed of "some imperious arrogance...was no Gish, nor Brooks, nor Dietrich, nor Garbo, who all share the same gift, the ability to reveal otherness." Yet again, Carter is interested in the stranger, the exile, the abandoned, the rejected. The director's first wife had also been an actress, the star of Mannheim's "The Fall of the House of Usher", now lost, despite its interest to fans of Edgar Allan Poe.
The narrator, enchanted by the actress and her star quality, "assumed the stance of gigolo", in the manner of a private detective who gets too close to his female client. After three martinis, he acknowledges, "Yes, there was something undeniably erotic about it, although she was as old as the hills..." No wonder he mentions "Sunset Boulevard". "I must admit I fell into a great fear. I even thought they might have lured me here to murder me, this siren of the cinema and her weird acolyte."
Safely back in his apartment the next day, he reveals that "[I] grew glum to realise how peripheral I was."
The pupil in his study was no match for the secular gods and goddesses of the screen.
Dream, That Uncensorable State
The next story pits the liberty of the imagination against the constraints of Puritanism, as personalised by Cotton Mather:
"The greatest genius of the Puritans lay in their ability to sniff out a pagan survival in, say, the custom of decorating a house with holly for the festive season; they were the stuff of which social anthropologists would be made! And their distaste for the icon of the lovely lady with her bonny babe - Mariolatry, graven images! - is less subtle than their disgust at the very idea of the festive season itself. It was the festivity of it that irked them. Nevertheless, it assuredly is a gross and heathenish practice, to welcome the birth of Our Saviour with feasting, drunkenness, and lewd displays of mumming and masquerading. We want none of that filth in this new place. No, thank you...No; the imagination must obey the rules of actuality. (Some of them, anyway.)"
It's the role of fiction, especially the carnivalesque festival of Angela Carter's pagan stories, to subvert Puritanism. The master of these revels was the Lord of Misrule himself, the clown prince of Old Christmas..."He is mirth, anarchy and terror...During the twelve days of Christmas, nothing is forbidden, everything is forgiven...The Romans called it Saturnalia, when all was topsy-turvy...A merry Christmas is Cotton Mather's worst nightmare."
The Infinite Riches of a Dirty Mind
Angela Carter deconstructs the commercial and cultural aspirations of Disneyland in "In Pantoland".
"In Pantoland, which is the carnival of the unacknowledged and the fiesta of the repressed, everything is excessive and gender is variable...Now they talk in double entendre, which is a language all of its own and is accented, not with the acute or grave, but with the eyebrows. Double entendre. That is, everyday discourse which has been dipped in the infinite riches of a dirty mind...Filthy work, but somebody has to do it...Saturnalia, the topsy-turvy time, 'the Liberties of December', when master swapped places with slave and anything could happen..."
She then investigates the role that women play in Pantoland, "this rude femaleness...flirting, flattering, fluttering...in the most salacious manner...I have come back to earth and I feel randy!"
Then she recognises,
"As Umberto Eco once said, 'An everlasting carnival does not work.' You can't keep it up, you know; nobody ever could. The essence of the carnival, the festival, the Feast of Fools, is transience. It is here today and gone tomorrow, a release of tension not a reconstitution of order, a refreshment...after which everything can go on again exactly as if nothing had happened...Things don't change because a girl puts on trousers or a chap slips on a frock, you know. Masters were masters again the day after Saturnalia ended; after the holiday from gender, it was back to the old grind..."
Angela Carter's short stories are truly excessive (they question and transcend social and literary boundaries), even transgressive, without being merely long and verbose. Her work is infinitely superior to the self-conscious pretence of the white male American post-modernists, even if, like Robert Coover, they purported to endorse her.
SOUNDTRACK:
May 4, 2021
These stories didn't entertain me, and I couldn't for the life of me see why most of them were written, or what they were trying to say. I loved The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories but I'm now starting to think that I won't like any of the author's other works.
February 18, 2017
I should have been writing reactions to the stories from the start but I was just enjoying them too much to stop between texts to pontificate. Sadly, this is Carter's last collection, at least partially posthumously edited. (Yes, I thought I could tell here and there--a word repetition, maybe a line that could have been cut--despite her rather florid use of language she seldom has a hair out of place, to coin a metaphor.) This collection lacks the intertwining of themes and images that makes The Bloody Chamber so amazing and, I must say, a tad of the raw force of the best stories of Venus. Still, Angela Carter's merely good writing is way ahead of so many writer's best. Anyway, her surreal style, her associative quality, lavish use of language, startling images all float my boat. I feel we're kindred spirits as I'm working on a collection of tales right now, many of which stray into similarly abstract and imaginative territory. Imitation, then, is a higher form of praise than Goodreads. Below are the updates--a few notes on individual stories of the latter half of the collection.
...
"The Merchant of Shadows." Another wonderful tale peppered with classic film references. Carter's stories grip my psyche so well, already swarming with all of these historical, literary, and cinematic images with which she effortlessly toys, evoking, re-arranging, renewing. I can't get over how similar these tales are to the stories I'm working on now--I'm a decade and a half behind her.
"The Ghost Ships." I hate Christmas Too.
"Pantoland." Patriotism, utopia, and obscenity--the very core of literature. A wordy Saturnalia done up for children. Exquisite!
"Ashputtle." A tad schematic, of course--but a nice insight into how Carter twists fairy tales (like those in The Bloody Chamber) into so many beautiful shapes in her imagination. She finds gems in the bedrock every time.
"Alice." There's an old liner note proclaims that Ella Fitzgerald could sing the phone book and it'd be more than sufficient. Angela Carter could write nonsense but the images and luscious cadence of the syntax would still be better 'n most. (This tale was a tad too derivative but well worth it if only for the phrase "tawny pippit.")
"...Magdalene." A nifty prose ekphrasis. I dig it.
...
"The Merchant of Shadows." Another wonderful tale peppered with classic film references. Carter's stories grip my psyche so well, already swarming with all of these historical, literary, and cinematic images with which she effortlessly toys, evoking, re-arranging, renewing. I can't get over how similar these tales are to the stories I'm working on now--I'm a decade and a half behind her.
"The Ghost Ships." I hate Christmas Too.
"Pantoland." Patriotism, utopia, and obscenity--the very core of literature. A wordy Saturnalia done up for children. Exquisite!
"Ashputtle." A tad schematic, of course--but a nice insight into how Carter twists fairy tales (like those in The Bloody Chamber) into so many beautiful shapes in her imagination. She finds gems in the bedrock every time.
"Alice." There's an old liner note proclaims that Ella Fitzgerald could sing the phone book and it'd be more than sufficient. Angela Carter could write nonsense but the images and luscious cadence of the syntax would still be better 'n most. (This tale was a tad too derivative but well worth it if only for the phrase "tawny pippit.")
"...Magdalene." A nifty prose ekphrasis. I dig it.
August 13, 2022
Publicada por Minotauro en 1995. Nuevamente Carter regresa a personajes históricos queridos y aterradores como Lizzie Borden, que en esta ocasión asiste a un circo (otro tema favorito de Carter), donde ve el mundo con otros ojos y vuelve a reescribir cuentos de hadas como Alicia en el País de las Maravillas o La cenicienta. Algo interesante de esta antología es que también toca tópicos del western de manera brillante como en "Lástima que sea una puta" o "Un rifle para el diablo".
July 22, 2023
"American Ghosts & Old World Wonders" es una cautivadora colección de cuentos que combina maravillosamente lo mágico y lo mundano. La combinación única de temas góticos, surrealistas y feministas de Carter hace de este libro una verdadera joya literaria que me cautivó de principio a fin. Apariciones fantasmales, criaturas fantásticas y sucesos surrealistas se entrelazan a la perfección con lo ordinario, borrando las líneas entre la realidad y la imaginación.
Uno de los aspectos que más me gustó es la habilidad de Carter para crear personajes con mucho carácter. Sus heroínas desafían los roles de género tradicionales y, a menudo, se liberan de las normas sociales para afirmar su independencia y sus deseos. Las mujeres en sus historias son fuertes, complejas y sin complejos. Esta exploración de temas feministas, combinada con su particular interpretación del realismo mágico, convierte en esta colección en una lectura obligada para cualquiera que busque una experiencia literaria estimulante.
Uno de los aspectos que más me gustó es la habilidad de Carter para crear personajes con mucho carácter. Sus heroínas desafían los roles de género tradicionales y, a menudo, se liberan de las normas sociales para afirmar su independencia y sus deseos. Las mujeres en sus historias son fuertes, complejas y sin complejos. Esta exploración de temas feministas, combinada con su particular interpretación del realismo mágico, convierte en esta colección en una lectura obligada para cualquiera que busque una experiencia literaria estimulante.
June 9, 2013
I read a book of Angela Carter short stories years ago and found them original, dark, quirky, and captivating. This compilation, however, is very short (capitalizing on what the estate could pull together after her death?) and, I find, not completely what I had expected. The first two stories, "Lizzie's Tiger" and "John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore" I found to be as I remembered the earlier book of stories I had read - quirky and thought provoking with Ms Carter's unconventional take, confounding readers' expectations. The next two stories in Part One were not, I felt, as good as the first two, but nonetheless reflecting the same twist of viewpoint that I expect from her work. Part Two, however, contains what I would call five short essays rather than stories - essays in which she attempts to turn on their head various (mainly) old world fairy tale legends (the last work being an essay assaying a painting of Mary Magdalene, with characteristic unconventional insights). Interesting thoughts, but difficult for me to follow not being familiar with some of the old world fairy tale characters mentioned and not nearly as entertaining as her stories. Short, quick read - definite feminist viewpoint - but not the best Angela Carter out there to be had.
June 23, 2014
I enjoyed the first three stories immensely. Things started to unravel a bit in the fourth story and what followed in the rest of the collection was less successful. It seems to be a whole lot of weird for the sake of weird. I liked her creativity but about half of the stories were just ok.
July 15, 2019
A twisted collection of abnormalities by the nebulous Angela Carter. I really love her work.
December 11, 2024
This is a posthumously published collection of short pieces that don't really hang together. The first five are about America and make a fine collection; the second five would have been much better amended onto other collections or published separately. Still, they are Angela Carter and full of Angela Carter-ness so I (mostly) loved them.
1)Lizzie's Tiger: a magical tale of four year old Lizzie Borden sneaking off to a carnival and her mystical connection to the tiger. There's lush writing and questionable morality, and the fact that she is Lizzie Borden is totally superfluous to the story. (Though Carter did write about the murders in another piece) 5
2)John Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore: a retelling of the classical play as a screen western, with stage direction and more questionable morality. 4
3)Gun For The Devil: another wild west story with a European folklore twist 4
4)The Merchant of Shadows: this one seems kind of out of place, although it is an American tale. A film student who is writing his thesis about an Old Hollywood director has an audience with his widow (and faded starlet), her sister, and her pet lion. 3
5)The Ghost Ships: a lovely holiday tale about Cotton Mather and the uptight puritans crushing the pagan elements of yuletide celebration. 4
6)In Pantoland: we travel back across the pond to talk about the sexual ambiguity of Pantomime. Weird and experimental exposition but I loved it. 5
7)Ashputtle, or The Mother's Ghost:
Several retellings of the Cinderella story with typical questionable morality, gory details, and ghost mothers. 4
8)Alice in Prague, or The Curious Room: a surreal little fable in the Alice In Wonderland extended universe. 4
9)Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene: my two favorite pieces bookend this collection (though I still don't think they belong in the same book) This is an examination of Wrightsman's painting of Mary Magdalene with the candle and skull, in which Carter dives into the "virgin mother/childless whore" Mary dichotomy. It's intimate and brilliant and a prime example of why she is one of my favorite authors. 5
1)Lizzie's Tiger: a magical tale of four year old Lizzie Borden sneaking off to a carnival and her mystical connection to the tiger. There's lush writing and questionable morality, and the fact that she is Lizzie Borden is totally superfluous to the story. (Though Carter did write about the murders in another piece) 5
2)John Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore: a retelling of the classical play as a screen western, with stage direction and more questionable morality. 4
3)Gun For The Devil: another wild west story with a European folklore twist 4
4)The Merchant of Shadows: this one seems kind of out of place, although it is an American tale. A film student who is writing his thesis about an Old Hollywood director has an audience with his widow (and faded starlet), her sister, and her pet lion. 3
5)The Ghost Ships: a lovely holiday tale about Cotton Mather and the uptight puritans crushing the pagan elements of yuletide celebration. 4
6)In Pantoland: we travel back across the pond to talk about the sexual ambiguity of Pantomime. Weird and experimental exposition but I loved it. 5
7)Ashputtle, or The Mother's Ghost:
Several retellings of the Cinderella story with typical questionable morality, gory details, and ghost mothers. 4
8)Alice in Prague, or The Curious Room: a surreal little fable in the Alice In Wonderland extended universe. 4
9)Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene: my two favorite pieces bookend this collection (though I still don't think they belong in the same book) This is an examination of Wrightsman's painting of Mary Magdalene with the candle and skull, in which Carter dives into the "virgin mother/childless whore" Mary dichotomy. It's intimate and brilliant and a prime example of why she is one of my favorite authors. 5
January 27, 2021
"Un pueblo mexicano fronterizo, caluroso, polvoriento, infestado de moscas... un pueblo sin esperanza, desangelado, final de trayecto para todos los que tienen la mala fortuna de acabar aquí arrumbados. Los Mendoza, un brutal grupo de bandidos, dominan el pueblo, a su sheriff corrupto, el banco, el telégrafo... todo. Hasta el cura lo han nombrado ellos."
Angela Carter ya ha dejado claro en obras anteriores su gusto y su influencia por el cine, en este libro nos deja ver su devoción absoluta a este arte que, sin duda, sabe apreciar y expresar en sus cuentos. A mi gusto podría ser el libro que menos refleja a la Angela Carter de prosa inigualable y cínica, pero cuantos como El tigre de Lizzie, Lástima que sea puta, Servir de rifle al diablo e Impresiones: la Magdalena Wrightsman merecen por completo la pena, dejarse llevar por un puñado de historias que se pasean por un pueblo en México, Londres y el hollywoodense L.A.; entre niñas enamoradas de tigres, actrices venidas a menos y un pistolero que se vende al mismo demonio.
Angela Carter ya ha dejado claro en obras anteriores su gusto y su influencia por el cine, en este libro nos deja ver su devoción absoluta a este arte que, sin duda, sabe apreciar y expresar en sus cuentos. A mi gusto podría ser el libro que menos refleja a la Angela Carter de prosa inigualable y cínica, pero cuantos como El tigre de Lizzie, Lástima que sea puta, Servir de rifle al diablo e Impresiones: la Magdalena Wrightsman merecen por completo la pena, dejarse llevar por un puñado de historias que se pasean por un pueblo en México, Londres y el hollywoodense L.A.; entre niñas enamoradas de tigres, actrices venidas a menos y un pistolero que se vende al mismo demonio.
April 17, 2022
⭐️⭐️⭐️.75
April 30, 2023
{3.5} "a tear, round, as it forms within the eye, for a tear acquires its characteristic shape of a pear, what's think of a tear shape, only in the act of falling"
March 3, 2024
3.5 stars
Love her style, the actual stories not so much.
Love her style, the actual stories not so much.
January 19, 2020
Her metaphors are so on point, her language vibrant and lively. Angela Carter's writing, to me is like I'm reading and breathing. It's sensorial, it's elegant, it's magical writing. It's swollen but in a controlled way and it seems flimsy, but then it hits you with philosphy and tragedy and it's never simple. And honestly even if it's simple it's just brilliant. She has so many sentences that make me grateful I can read. There's some I wish I could string on a necklace and wear around my neck:
'Boston Bay, calm as milk, black as ink, smooth as silk.'
Lizzie's Tiger is especially good. (What is it about tigers? What makes them so special in fiction and otherwise?) There's one about a lazy, dusty, cowboy town. There's rewritings of stories, reimaginings of concepts. There's the gender masquerade I know and love her for and a general feeling of disorder and flamboyance that I truly appreciate. Her wit, her mastery of words...I guess at this point I'm just fangirling. I love Angela Carter. I need to read more of her stuff.
'Boston Bay, calm as milk, black as ink, smooth as silk.'
Lizzie's Tiger is especially good. (What is it about tigers? What makes them so special in fiction and otherwise?) There's one about a lazy, dusty, cowboy town. There's rewritings of stories, reimaginings of concepts. There's the gender masquerade I know and love her for and a general feeling of disorder and flamboyance that I truly appreciate. Her wit, her mastery of words...I guess at this point I'm just fangirling. I love Angela Carter. I need to read more of her stuff.
May 3, 2012
I think I liked the first half of the book more than the second. Sometimes her weirdness is just a little too weird for me but loved John Ford's 'Tis pity she's a whore and Gun for the devil.
December 8, 2013
fair enough these were published post-humously, but they really weren't great
January 13, 2019
American Ghosts And Old World Wonders (1993) is a strangely mixed bag - compared to the equally strange yet more uniformly excellent Black Venus (1985), aka Saints And Strangers.
The best of them - Lizzie's Tiger, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’ and The Ghost Ships stand far apart from the others, although, having now finished the collection, Gun for the Devil sticks in the mind in an unsavoury yet Clint Eastwood Pale Rider kind-of-way, and The Merchant of Shadows feels like a cross between Kerouac and Hemingway, but a tale I would be glad to drive away from, with its double-crossing stars.
· Lizzie's Tiger - 8.47
A gorgeous little cameo of a ferociously self-contained little 4-year-old from an impoverished slum-dwelling, motherless. But the twist at the end is like the final clue of a whodunnit suddenly dropped on the table before you, and it all falls into place.
· John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's A Whore - 8.47
A combination of the 1633 play and a John Ford Western, comprising narrative prose and scriptwriting passages, the tale of the isolated love between brother and sister is beautifully wrought. Carter gives a sense of place in mere phrases - the 'prairie: the vast, elegiac plain' - and the sense of intimacy between the two teens in glimpses: holding hands, heads bowed, kaleidoscope images of their blonde-topped faces in the broken mirror, the discarded petticoat - and builds a world of love in a world where sin is the primordial vestige of civilisation in the middle of nowhere, a frontier land of Calvinist thin-lipped tightness. Wonderful stuff, to mix the two media, the two forms, and tell a tale of tragic love as wrenching as Romeo And Juliet.
· Gun For The Devil - 6.7
A seedy tale of revenge in a lost niche of the world nobody wants to live in - so why do they go to live there? Hopelessness is juxtaposed with some vain semblance of hope like a tentative thread of need clinging onto life, but lives without purpose, without aim - until the seventh bullet. I didn't enjoy it - but it stuck in my mind, somehow.
· The Merchant Of Shadows - 6.07
If I had not known this was by Carter, I would never have ascribed it to her. It's out of her oeuvre, had no fixed style and seemed to be as much a left-over scrap of former glory days as her subject's. Nasty little bit of a story, redeemed only by the sad fate of the old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion.
· The Ghost Ships - 8.4
'Boston Bay, calm as milk, black as ink, smooth as silk.'
' [...] the imagination must obey the rules of actuality. (Some of them, anyway.)'
Look what the Puritans have given up - that riotous festivity older than Christmas, older than Christ.
· In Pantoland - 6.53
In Pantoland is a piece which passes me by - since I neither like, nor am interested in pantomime - except for the astute recognition of the Bakhtian:
'As Umberto Eco once said, "An everlasting carnival does not work." [...] It is here today and gone tomorrow, a release of tension, not a reconstitution of order....'
· Ashputtle or The Mother's Ghost - - 7.6
Three grotesque versions of the Cinderella story. The first is a feminist treatise; the second an object lesson in cruelty; the third a quick-fire revenge. I prefer the Disney version.
· Alice In Prague or The Curious Room - 6.63
A very strange concoction of the alchemist's lair in Archduke Rudolph's Czech castle and the appearance of a displaced Alice in Wonderland. I liked the riddles, though could answer none.
· Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene - 7.47
Carter's tale of the three Mary's is inspired by Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), a French Baroque painter, who painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight, and Donatello's Magdalene Penitent. La Tour's paintings are dark indeed, but the scarlet dress of Mary Magdalene, dimly done, is offset by the lambent creamery of her blouse and skin in a penitent light. Donatello's sculpture, however, has the eyeless sockets of the dead. But this is the woman who, after washing Christ's feet, dried them with her hair, a dually erotic yet tender gesture. The duality of the reflected candle flames in the mirror upon which she meditates are her symbols. But what is that her hands rest upon?
Nearly 8/10.
The best of them - Lizzie's Tiger, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’ and The Ghost Ships stand far apart from the others, although, having now finished the collection, Gun for the Devil sticks in the mind in an unsavoury yet Clint Eastwood Pale Rider kind-of-way, and The Merchant of Shadows feels like a cross between Kerouac and Hemingway, but a tale I would be glad to drive away from, with its double-crossing stars.
· Lizzie's Tiger - 8.47
A gorgeous little cameo of a ferociously self-contained little 4-year-old from an impoverished slum-dwelling, motherless. But the twist at the end is like the final clue of a whodunnit suddenly dropped on the table before you, and it all falls into place.
· John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's A Whore - 8.47
A combination of the 1633 play and a John Ford Western, comprising narrative prose and scriptwriting passages, the tale of the isolated love between brother and sister is beautifully wrought. Carter gives a sense of place in mere phrases - the 'prairie: the vast, elegiac plain' - and the sense of intimacy between the two teens in glimpses: holding hands, heads bowed, kaleidoscope images of their blonde-topped faces in the broken mirror, the discarded petticoat - and builds a world of love in a world where sin is the primordial vestige of civilisation in the middle of nowhere, a frontier land of Calvinist thin-lipped tightness. Wonderful stuff, to mix the two media, the two forms, and tell a tale of tragic love as wrenching as Romeo And Juliet.
· Gun For The Devil - 6.7
A seedy tale of revenge in a lost niche of the world nobody wants to live in - so why do they go to live there? Hopelessness is juxtaposed with some vain semblance of hope like a tentative thread of need clinging onto life, but lives without purpose, without aim - until the seventh bullet. I didn't enjoy it - but it stuck in my mind, somehow.
· The Merchant Of Shadows - 6.07
If I had not known this was by Carter, I would never have ascribed it to her. It's out of her oeuvre, had no fixed style and seemed to be as much a left-over scrap of former glory days as her subject's. Nasty little bit of a story, redeemed only by the sad fate of the old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion.
· The Ghost Ships - 8.4
'Boston Bay, calm as milk, black as ink, smooth as silk.'
' [...] the imagination must obey the rules of actuality. (Some of them, anyway.)'
Look what the Puritans have given up - that riotous festivity older than Christmas, older than Christ.
· In Pantoland - 6.53
In Pantoland is a piece which passes me by - since I neither like, nor am interested in pantomime - except for the astute recognition of the Bakhtian:
'As Umberto Eco once said, "An everlasting carnival does not work." [...] It is here today and gone tomorrow, a release of tension, not a reconstitution of order....'
· Ashputtle or The Mother's Ghost - - 7.6
Three grotesque versions of the Cinderella story. The first is a feminist treatise; the second an object lesson in cruelty; the third a quick-fire revenge. I prefer the Disney version.
· Alice In Prague or The Curious Room - 6.63
A very strange concoction of the alchemist's lair in Archduke Rudolph's Czech castle and the appearance of a displaced Alice in Wonderland. I liked the riddles, though could answer none.
· Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene - 7.47
Carter's tale of the three Mary's is inspired by Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), a French Baroque painter, who painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight, and Donatello's Magdalene Penitent. La Tour's paintings are dark indeed, but the scarlet dress of Mary Magdalene, dimly done, is offset by the lambent creamery of her blouse and skin in a penitent light. Donatello's sculpture, however, has the eyeless sockets of the dead. But this is the woman who, after washing Christ's feet, dried them with her hair, a dually erotic yet tender gesture. The duality of the reflected candle flames in the mirror upon which she meditates are her symbols. But what is that her hands rest upon?
Nearly 8/10.
March 8, 2021
Published after her death and collecting together stories and a short piece of sort of non-fiction that had appeared in magazines, some of it's amazing and some of it's only quite good, I love Carter normally but a couple of them went over my head and I'm not sure of the point of the final two pieces based on Jan Švankmajer's Alice and paintings of Mary Madgelene. Still, for the takes on Cinderella, Lizzie Borden meeting a tiger, and John Ford's Tis Pity She's A Whore it's definitely worth reading. 3.75/5
July 14, 2022
Me quedo con "Las Maravillas del Viejo Mundo" (segunda parte del libro) , una colección de escritos notables partiendo por esa aparición mágica de Alicia en la Praga alquímica de Rodolfo II; el viaje de los tres barcos de Navidad al puritanismo de Nueva Inglaterra; el análisis del cuadro de Magdalena y esa locura carnavalesca de Pantolandia... se me abre el apetito por más Angela Carter de solo recordarlos.
February 18, 2025
This collection left me feeling hot and cold. Perhaps this is because the stories are of an uneven quality, or perhaps because I am so familiar with Carter's voice and style. That said, there are two incredible, virtuoso pieces in this book. The first is a wonderful retelling of John Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore, and the second is the creepy and beautiful Gun for the Devil. I recommend the book for these two stories as they are remarkably imaginative, shocking and haunting.
July 16, 2020
A book that was not really my cup of tea. I found the writing confusing and all over the place with way too many mythical representations of fantasy and reality rolled together into a mish mash of ideals and symbolic references. To say it had its moments is true but not enough to hold any real enjoyment for me and overall I would not recommend this book.
August 28, 2023
"𝘢 𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘸,
𝘢 𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘸 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘭𝘺, 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭
𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦,
𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘵𝘴
𝘤𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭,
𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴, 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦
𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘴;" — Ashputtle or The Mother's Ghost
𝘢 𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘸 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘭𝘺, 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭
𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦,
𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘵𝘴
𝘤𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭,
𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴, 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦
𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘴;" — Ashputtle or The Mother's Ghost
May 21, 2022
Three stars is mean. Part One is excellent. Unfortunately, while beautifully written, Part Two doesn't feel like it belongs in the same book. Basically there is not enough material to justify a collection. Still worth reading but a little too light on content.
October 17, 2019
Occhi che vedono in modo un po' diverso.
November 9, 2019
I used to love Angela Carter in my 20s, maybe it’s me that’s changed! I still really appreciate the vividly stark descriptive turn of phrase she uses.
July 8, 2021
Solid collection, I'd put it up there with Black Venus. Even the stories I initially found middling like In Pantoland and Alice in Prague stay in my mind long after I've read them.
January 18, 2022
Part 1 would be 4 stars but Part 2 brought down the overall rating
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews