The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (1979)

A collection of 10 re-imaginings of fairy tales, simultaneously both old and modern, bawdy and pure.

Book Review: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories was written by Angela Carter, and Angela Carter is a force of nature. Nature inhabits, possesses, overwhelms these stories, trees and bushes and shrubs, dark forests and animals, wild beasts, wolves, lions, tigers, horses, cats, more wolves, werewolves, and even vampires. Carter sees and writes her own versions of Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, and more. At times the tales are hardly recognizable, so much she's made them her own. In making them her own she's put her own unique stamp on them, her rich, too rich, voluptuous, Rubenesque language. Angela Carter is no careful carpenter, carving out every extra sentence, cutting away every unnecessary word, agonizing over too much. No, she glories in words, loves them, cannot get enough, more words, more sentences, more, she wants "too much." She's drunk on words. The Bloody Chamber is not a poor half drowned cat, deflated and sad. Her stories are rich with all the words that fit, and what words they are: sere, glistering, lustratory, lubbery, tenebrous catafalques, and when she combines them she produces phrases that no one has ever written: "a sombre delirium," "atrocious loneliness," "a fugue of the continuous, a world of sensual immediacy," "overseer of somnambulists," "rusted with a wash of pain," "lupine fiestas," "feral disorder," "her furred thoughts and primal sentience." Even though the stories are updated to include automobiles, telephones, New York, bicycles, and women doing it for themselves, they still retain fairy tales' ancient chill of dungeons and shadowy darkness of forests. A little sex never hurt anyone, either. The stories, as do the sentences, intertwine, repeat, enfold, as Carter writes variations of her own variations of the old stories from olden times. This is not a quick read, but a worthwhile one. Any potential authors will find so much here that they will want to steal and keep as their own. Either as a reader or a writer, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is a learning experience, rich, warm, and lush as an ermine blanket. [4 Stars]