This is early Carter and therefore not her most developed work, but it does promise a future burgeoning of ideas and creativity. Well worth a read if you like her style, but I wouldn't necessarily start with this one. ( )

no one writes like Angela Carter. Fairy tales for the modern world where we hide our fears deep. ( )

The stories in this collection aren't simply Gothic. They are full of darkness without any source of light. Full of dark, ominous sexuality and murderous impulses. The set is primarily a tapestry of Japanese lore and urban wanderings, vindictive geishas lurking in the lantern-lit backstreets of Tokyo. Tribal, animalistic, shamanic rituals from the heart of Africa, androgynous enchantresses hidden in moonlit caves, women seeking their lovers of the past in the East, tales of incest upon the villages of the German mountains, dark actions and betrayals within a terrorist group in the heart of London in the 70s.

If you choose to read ''Fireworks'', do it with a clear and open mind. Don't focus on the sexual premise of the stories, look beyond it, within the darkness of the human soul and let the beauty of Carter's language carry you away. Not for the faint of heart... ( )

enjoyed the autobiographical details ( )

In the author's afterword to this volume, she terms these short fictions "tales," rather than "stories," explaining that the story is supposed to offer credibility of character and place, while tales operate in a freer field of narrative. Consciously working in the vein of Poe and Hoffman, then, Angela Carter offers pieces telling of various obsessions, dreams, enchantments, and transformations. All were written in the early 1970s, during which she spent two years living in Japan. Accordingly, there are three of these stories that are from the perspective of an Englishwoman in Japan.

Other pieces -- notably "Master" (which is the basis of the cover illustration for my Quartet Books paperback copy) and "Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest" seem to be meditations on the relationship between Western culture and the "savage," uncivilized humans and non-humans alike. "The Loves of Lady Purple" is a weird tale centering on outre puppetry, and "The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter" is as unrelentingly gruesome as the darkest tales of Clark Ashton Smith. But my favorite one in the book is the longish and highly surreal "Reflections," which centers on a novel vision of Baphomet.