Virago Monthly Reads: May 2018: Angela Carter

From Wikipedia:

"Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, to Sophia Olive (née Farthing; 1905–1969) and Hugh Alexander Stalker (1896–1988), Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled against anorexia. After attending Streatham and Clapham High School, in south London, 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, divorcing in 1972. In 1969, she used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, 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 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. In 1979, both The Bloody Chamber, and her influentialcitation needed essay, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, appeared. In the essay, according to the writer Marina Warner, Carter "deconstructs the arguments that underlie The Bloody Chamber. It's about desire and its destruction, the self-immolation of women, how women collude and connive with their condition of enslavement. She was much more independent-minded than the traditional feminist of her time."

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 film: The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1987). She was actively involved in both 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 Woolf'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). Her novel Nights at the Circus won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature. Her last novel, Wise Children, is a surreal wild ride through British theatre and music hall traditions.

At the time of her death, Carter had started work on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens; only a synopsis survives.

Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer."

Thank you Laura!

Of Carter's novels I have Several perceptions still unread. I also have the three collected volumes of her shorter works - Burning your boats (stories), The curious room (dramatic works) and Shaking a leg (essays and journalism) which I will dip in and out of.

I know Carter is not universally loved in this group (!) but I highly recommend the recent biography, The invention of Angela Carter if you don't want to try any more of her own writing.

>2 Sakerfalcon: I know Carter is not universally loved in this group (!)

Which is why I have yet to read anything by her! However, I understand The Magic Toyshop is one of her more accessible works so I plan to read it this month.

>3 lauralkeet: I'd say that is a good place to start; otherwise The bloody chamber, which is retold fairy tales, or Wise children, in which a 90 year old woman recounts her and her twin sister's eventful lives on the music hall stage, are both good.

Ahem. After my disastrous experience with The Passion of The New Eve, I'll try something else.... Perhaps The Magic Toyshop might be the one for me!

I also failed to get on with The Passion of New Eve, but I'll give The Magic Toyshop a go this month.

Tentatively hoping to join in again this month. I've read and enjoyed The Bloody Chamber stories but nothing else by Carter. I'm also planning to read The Magic Toyshop so glad to hear that's a good place to start!

I see that it it is Angela Carter's birthday today. I have just reread "Peter and the Wolf" from the Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women. It is quite a strange and unpleasant story but I gather this applies to at least some of Angela Carter's other work too.

As I'm going away in a few days I will start my first proper reading with Fireworks, which looks quite short. I thought it was a novel but I now see that it contains short stories so it is (hopefully) an ideal one to start with. If I get past that successfully I will attempt The Passion of New Eve.

For anyone who likes a touch of magical realism -- go for Nights at the Circus -- her best in my estimation. I do love The Magic Toyshop and Love as well.

>8 europhile: Good luck Grant - I didn’t get on well with Passion at all..... 😱

Oh, dear: the only one I can easily get to this month is the much-maligned The Passion of New Eve, which makes me nervous.
Like many others here, I've really enjoyed The Magic Toyshop and The Bloody Chamber fairytale-retellings.
I've also read another early one which was quite remarkable: Shadow Dance. http://www.buriedinprint.com/testicles-buttocks-and-vomit-in-angela-carter/
The new biography does sound good though!

Also, I see that Angela Carter is the most recent in the "Eat Your Words" series on "The Paris Review": https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/27/cooking-with-angela-carter/

Well, she-who-likes-to-be-read-to does not want to hear from Angela Carter at all so we are taking The Selected Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner away with us instead, as I've heard and read good things about it.

I've finished Several perceptions. This follows 6 months in the life of Joseph, a young unemployed man who drifts around 1960s Bristol searching vaguely for meaning in his life. Along the way he frees a badger from the zoo, posts a turd to Lyndon Johnson in protest at the Vietnam war, and sleeps with his friend's mother. This is a colourful, seedy novel which vividly conveys the slightly grimy, plastic feel of popular culture of the times. Joseph isn't particularly sympathetic but his world is an interesting one. It's very interesting to compare it with the more genteel 1930s Bristol depicted by E. H. Young.

Now I'm halfway through Love, which is very well written with vivid descriptions but the unhealthy relationships between the characters are unpleasant.

I finished The Magic Toyshop over the weekend. What an odd, but strangely satisfying, book. And I couldn't stop reading -- it was like watching a train wreck.

I've seen several comments about how this is Carter's most accessible book. I would love to hear from others what makes Carter difficult to read. I'd like to understand what I'm in for if I choose to read another someday.

Oh! I almost forgot. In a lovely bit of serendipity, inside the book cover was a card from Karen (kaggsy), who apparently sent The Magic Toyshop to me. Thank you Karen!!

>15 lauralkeet: Very welcome Laura! Though I have no memory of this.... ;)

I've had more success with Carter as I've just finished Fireworks, a collection of short works mostly written when she was in Japan in the early 1970s I believe. I'll review it on my blog eventually!

The hardest thing I'm finding with her is the sexual violence. It was pretty grim in The Passion of The New Eve, and yet my Middle Child, who is very anti such things and staunchly feminist, just told me what a great book it was. So go figure...

But I loved Fireworks a lot so I don't think I'm ready to give up on Carter yet! :)

>16 kaggsy: I didn't remember it either, Karen! According to LT you sent it about 2 years ago, so it wasn't for secret santa or anything like that. Perhaps you were just shedding some duplicates. I can relate to your comments about sexual violence. I can handle that in a single book but not over and over again. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed Fireworks because that's the only other Angela Carter on my shelves. And it's short!

>17 lauralkeet: Yes it’s short which is a bonus! 🤣 However, it’s dark and violent in places but there is some really beautiful writing and I didn’t have the same issues with this one as I did with Eve.

I finished Love last night and thought it was very good, though not an easy book to read due to the unlikeable characters and their destructive relationships. Carter's prose is, as usual, brilliant, and her hyper-real descriptions and metaphors bring colour to the sordid background of the story. Childlike, superstitious Annabel is married to the beautiful Lee, but there is a constant disconnect between them and neither really satisfies each other. Lee's brother Buzz forms the third side of the triangle as he and Annabel share an uneasy fascination with each other. My edition had an afterword by Carter in which she tells us what she imagines would have happened to the characters after the story closes.

Now I'm reading some of the short stories in Burning your boats, trying to focus on those I haven't read before, or not recently.

>19 Sakerfalcon: Her prose *is* exceptional, isn't it?

>20 kaggsy: Whether she's channelling chatty Cockneys or going off on purple Baroque flights of fancy, Carter's prose is always amazing! She conjures up the most incredible images.

>15 lauralkeet: I've been thinking about Laura's question about what people find difficult about Carter. I would compare her to Tanith Lee and Elizabeth Hand in that her work is often infused with troubling sexuality and violence, as Karen also suggested. Female characters aren't always what we want women to be - they can be passive, complicit in their victimhood, or predatory and violent, or have desires that make us uncomfortable (such as for incest). All three authors show the dark side of human nature, parts of which we would rather not acknowledge. (Obviously all three have also written comparatively bright and sunny works too though!)

My problem with Carter is that her books are 'ugly'. That is my own description and (to me) it means that I don't like her characters and what they do. I find them 'ugly', which I guess means (to me) not warm and fuzzy and life affirming. I fear that this speaks to my lack of sophistication as a reader because I also find Toni Morrison 'ugly' and she won the Nobel Prize for Literature!

>22 romain: You sum up in one word what I was trying to say in my rambling paragraph above!

>21 Sakerfalcon:, >22 romain: that's very helpful actually. I thought it was perhaps her writing style that made for difficult reading. I gather it's more the themes she chooses to write about, and the way she explores those themes. That's good to know.

Agreed with all above. I think I'm probably going to have to be in the right mood for her subject matter - I obviously was with Fireworks - and then things will work for me. As I said, I really do like her prose (or at least I did in this one) and so it's just a case of dealing with the fact that she goes to those darker places.

>21 Sakerfalcon: That's an interesting comparison, to Elizabeth Hand, and it's an apt one. The only Hand I've read is Generation Loss (5*****), which I love – primarily for the Maine setting, which I'm an absolute sucker for.

The only Carter I've previously read are Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales (3***) and Fireworks (2½**). I didn't make any review post on either and it's been a while since I read both – but my recollection is that the Fairy Tales were alright but fairly conventional and that Fireworks just didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

I just finished The Magic Toyshop (5*****) and wish I could get hold of the movie! I positively loved it. That "gothic house" setting and the relationship between Melanie and Margaret reminds me somehow of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle (which I strongly prefer over The Haunting of Hill House). I'm not saying I really "get" what The Magic Toyshop was all about, but I still loved it.

Considering my current health issues, I'm trying strongly right now to resist buying too many new books, so sticking to what I have, I'll be doing Wise Children next. (I'm not sure where my copy of Fireworks is, but in the unlikely event I stumble across it I'll probably give it a second chance.) I've also got The Virago Book of Fairy Tales and I may give Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales a reread. The Sadeian Woman is sitting right where I can put my hands on it, but I'm not sure I'm up for essays and critical theory at the moment.

ETA: And my god, for someone who died so relatively young, what an enormous body of work she has! Too bad that sequel to my favorite book never came off. I'm not usually at all a fan of Brontëan sequels, but Carter's would have been interesting for sure.

I have also read Fireworks. I didn't really like it though I did appreciate some of the vocabulary and imagery. I had previously read "The Loves of Lady Purple" in an anthology and it didn't appeal to me any more the second time around. Some of the stories including this one seemed to me like exercises in weirdness and grossness without any emotional content. I would still consider trying the dreaded The Passion of New Eve but might have to leave it a few days!

Well, here are my thoughts on Fireworks! I find myself thinking I'd like to try The Magic Toyshop next - we shall see!

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/velvet-nights-spiked-wi...

An excellent review, Karen. I'm glad I have a copy of Fireworks -- I'm sure someday I'll be in the mood to read it, but not this month. I'm leaving on holiday tomorrow and it's not quite what I'm looking for in holiday reading!

LOL! No - not exactly one for the beach.... ;)

28> Great review of Fireworks. There are two books by Carter that I didn't like -- The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr. Hoffman and your Eve. I did love and recommend The Magic Toyshop.

>31 janeajones: Thank you! The Magic Toyshop is obviously the one to go to next!

Once I got started The Passion of New Eve didn't take too long to finish. I have to say that Angela Carter had an amazing imagination. It was well-written, full of wonderful language (though marred by the occasional spelling mistake, where were the editors?) and shockingly vivid imagery, though some of it was distasteful, weird and just plain outlandish. A cross between dystopian science fiction, mythology and I don't know what else (pornography perhaps?). I wouldn't say I liked it exactly but I'm still glad I read it. I am now going to reward myself for the achievement of getting through it by trying The Magic Toyshop which sounds as though it should be much more palatable.

I finished The Magic Toyshop earlier his month. I did find it more accessible than The Passion of New Eve and found myself involved with everyone oppressed by Uncle Philip. I felt the ending seemed right.

Finished (several days ago) Virago Book of Fairy Tales (4****). Not really my cuppa (I prefer "fractured" retold fairy tales that are a bit longer), but it would be excellent as an academic resource for its end-noted bibliographical referencing and occasional end-noted annotations. I ought to give Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales a reread if I can find it around the house.

And just last night finished Wise Children (4½****). I loved the romping spirit of picaresque, which reminded me of Ellen Galford's Moll Cutpurse.

I've only got one Carter left around the house that I haven't yet read, The Sadeian Woman, which I'm hoping to get to before month's end. And I'd like to give Fireworks a reread. (I gave it 2½** quite several years ago, but after reading other Carters I ought to give it another try.)

I just started The Sadeian Woman and straightaway gave up on it. Wa-a-a-ay too theoretical for my taste.

Dunno if i'm going to get to a reread of Fireworks before the end of the month.

I was too tired a couple of nights ago to start on another novel so picked up Expletives Deleted instead. This is a collection of essays and reviews selected by the author. Interestingly there are no reviews on LT yet so I wasn't sure how good it would be but it certainly started well. The introduction begins "I am known in my circle as notoriously foul-mouthed", which I guess explains the title. I'm about a quarter of the way in and finding it very interesting so far, even the reviews of books I haven't read (or even heard of) yet. I think I will finish it before starting anything else.

ETA: Finished it this evening. Well worth reading, the longer reviews of Memoirs of a Midget (which I read as a child and should now reread) and Jane Eyre (which I really really must read this year!) were the most insightful. Some of the shorter pieces were a bit forgettable but at least she always seemed to have an opinion and was prepared to express it. I particularly liked some of her comments on Elizabeth David, Alice Waters and the 'foodie' trend, and she also includes some of the responses she received, either correcting or disagreeing with her, when these pieces were originally published.

I finished The Magic Toyshop before the end of May - I enjoyed it but not as much as The Bloody Chamber collection.