This was my first foray into the strange, strange world of Angela Carter. I thought it'd make a particularly good Halloween-weekend read, and I was right.
But let me add: this is a superbly creepy book, the kind of book that, if you're lolling about on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, and you perhaps take a little snooze in between stories, you're likely to have dreams of the most peculiar nature.
Most of these little tales are retellings of fairy tales, including Beauty and the Beast and Little Red Riding Hood. But as if the original versions of those tales weren't spooky enough, Carter's take on them is hallucinogenic, erotic, full of suspense--sure, you thought you knew how Little Red Riding Hood ended, but with Carter, you might be wrong. Or right--but not in the way you thought you'd be.
For such a short book (126 pages), it's a slow read, in part because I needed to take a break after each story and collect my thoughts (or dream weird dreams) and in part because Carter's writing is so lush and detailed. Sure, I could have skimmed, but to get the full effect, it's necessary to read each word, take your time. And like a good writer, each word contributes to the story, either forwarding the plot or character or setting the scene:
"A great, intoxicated surge of the heavy scent of red roses blew into his face as soon as they left the village, inducing a sensuous vertigo; a blast of rich, faintly corrupt sweetness strong enough almost, to fell him. Too many roses. Too many roses bloomed on enormous thickets that lined the path, thickets bristling with thorns, and the flowers themselves were almost too luxuriant, their huge congregations of plush petals somehow obscene in their excess, their whorled, tightly budded cores outrageous in their implications."
Or even something as short as:
"Midwinter--invincible, immaculate."
Not all stories are grim (pun intended); but even the ones with humor, like the retelling of Puss-in-Boots, have a sense of menace throughout, so any laughs are uneasy. Adding to the hallucinatory quality is the occasional crossover of one fairy tale to another, such as when, in the tale about vampires, comes the old Jack and the Beanstalk line, given a new sense of the macabre: "Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."
Carter even goes so far as to imply what kind of reader would not be touched by these tales:
"And though he feels unease, he cannot feel terror; so he is like the boy in the fairy tale, who does not know how to shudder, and so he is like the boy in the fairy tale, who does not know how to shudder, and not spooks, ghouls, beasties, the Devil himself and all his retinue could do the trick.
"This lack of imagination gives his heroism to the hero."
What a great line! So perfect for the story, yet with subcontexts outside of the story.
Fortunately, I must have imagination, because stories did make me shudder, and kept me reading. A perfect Halloween accompaniment.
Note: it sounds like Carter herself was an interesting person who died at only 51--way too young. Here's a written eulogy by Salman Rushdie.
