I love these stories. She writes like, I dunno, a raunchy and giddy Robert Aickman? I want to be friends with her as teenagers and wear capes to school. But more, her stories feel genuinely dangerous. ( )

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With a lifelong fascination with and love for fairy tales, I kept reading mentions of Angela Carter as a prime modern practitioner of the art, so I figured it was time I gave her a look. Lush, ornamental, even purple prose - which is fine with me - but it was a bit like having double chocolate raspberry cheesecake three times a day for a week. After a while... you need to cleanse your palate. Some smooth, sly retellings of classic fairy tales; some try too hard and lose the suspension of belief. I confess I didn't finish - a little Carter goes a long way. Once you see what she's up to, that's about all you need. ( )

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. ( )

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presents Carter's considerable legacy of short fiction gathered from published books, and includes early and previously unpublished stories.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.