[REVIEWS] Book: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

[thewlisian_afer]

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Well, I usually include some kind of blurb about the books I review. Most of the time it's copied direcctly from the back cover or inside flap. This book ... doesn't have one! So instead you get what Wikipedia says about it:

The Bloody Chamber (or The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories) is an anthology of short fiction by Angela Carter. It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Vintage and won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. All of the stories share a common theme of being closely based upon fairytales or folk tales. However, Angela Carter has stated: "My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories."

I had some trouble with the author's writing style. First and most irritating, there was definite comma abuse going on. I overuse commas myself and even I thought there were way too freakin' many. And secondly, I'm also a big fan of big words but only when it feels right and the writing flows. Vocabulary choices should enhance the story, not burden the reader. There were a couple of stories that I thought were real gems, but overall I wasn't thrilled.

Here's a list of the ten stories, the tales they were based on and what I thought of them:

01.) "The Bloody Chamber," based on Bluebeard. Loved the ending of this one. The brave handsome knight or whatever stereotypical male the author chooses to have swoop in to save the day is old hat. This is so much better.

02.) "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon," based on Beauty and the Beast. Pretty typical. Mostly just updated to more modern times, IMO. Certainly not bad but nothing really special.

03.) "The Tiger's Bride," based on Beauty and the Beast. I liked this one a lot. Nice twist. Definitely a ... not necessarily new but definitely more obscure take on the tale.

04.) "Puss-in-Boots," based on Puss in Boots. This might be my favorite story in the collection. I'd never read anything quite like it before and it made me laugh. I thought it was charmingly irreverent and I just really loved it.

05.) "The Erl-King," based on the Erlking. It might just be because I was very tired when I read this one but I don't know if I really got it. And if I did get it, I still didn't care for it. Which is a shame because I quite like the original folk tale.

06.) "The Snow Child," based on "an obscure variant" of Snow White. It was a page long and included corpse rape. I was unimpressed.

07.) "The Lady of the House of Love," based on Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty done in 1914 Romania with vampires? Yes, please. It might be my favorite story in the collection. Can't decide between this and "Puss-in-Boots."

08.) "The Werewolf," based on Little Red Riding Hood. Predictable. Boring.

09.) "The Company of Wolves," based on Little Red Riding Hood. Saw the movie in October, thanks to Netflix. Didn't like that, either.

10.) "Wolf-Alice," based on Little Red Riding Hood (and others). I didn't really like this because ... I wanted more of it. I wanted it to be a novelette or novella (yes, there is a difference). It could've been really good but I felt like a lot was glossed over.

Comments

[lauriegilbert.livejournal.com]

I agree Angela Carter takes some getting used to. I had this book assigned during my Fairytale class in undergrad and so I've read 'em all. I remember thinking that she had a great imagination and I liked the majority of them. Except for the corpse rape. That was a step too far for me.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

The more I sit and ruminate on the book, the more I think I liked it. Now that I'm not actually reading and dealing with the writing style, it's just the idea of the stories that are left, and the ideas were great. You're right about her having a great imagination. The stories I actually disliked were the shortest ones, I think. So while I only liked 60% of the stories, the ones I like are probably about 80% of the book.