The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Reviews
the bloody chamber was the only good story, others not really
It's a small 3 stars for me. Looking back at it, it felt a bit mediocre I guess ? I expected more from what I've heard around this anthology. The Bloody Chamber felt like a literal retelling of the "Blue Beard" tale, like no changes or what juste the time period and the context I guess. Nothing was brought to this retelling, the same can be told for two following short stories (courtship of mr Lyon and the Tiger's bride). Although, I would say The Tiger's Bride was probably my favourite but note that the bar is not high lol. This is an anthology were I tried to take my time with it and spaced out my reading between the short stories to process them.
Some short stories, I didn't know what was their point of being there really, those stories were confusing and I didn't manage to understand or see any messages behind it. ( looking at you, the werewolf stories lol, and omg puss-in-boots 🙅🏻♀️ )
The general critique said there's some social commentary and I honestly couldn't see it except a few on female condition in this time around but really I wanted to see more of it otherwise the stories felt pointless to me. It probably sounds mean but that's how I felt as a reader who expected much more from this anthology.
Yeah 3 stars is really a nice rating when you see that I am basically ranting in this review lol.
A beautiful and sharp collection of reimagined fairytales, in which the female characters are not only impassive damsels to be rescued by a prince in shining armor, but have the strength to fight for their life, their sexuality and self-determination.
my favorites were the erl-king and the lady of the house of love
oh classic for a reason this was sharp and delicious
It's like Peter Pan but instead of having faith, trust, and pixie dust in order to fly, Angela lets her heroines live with(terrible) fate(s), (a whole lot of) thrust(s), blood, blood, more blood, oh, and did I mention blood? Yeap, blood. Andddd, no Tinkerbel coz I think she killed her off too ...brutally. Perfect October read though.
the lady of the house of love has to by my favorite story
loved the imagery but these were not the feminist retellings i thought these were going to be. understand that this wasn’t carter’s main goal anyways. however, and despite the luscious imagery, i didn’t rejoice for the female protagonists as much as i anticipated. also dragged a bit in building atmosphere during certain points. 4 stars anyway for the conceptualization and overall attempt.
Fetish repository
objectively this seems like good literature but a lot of it probably just went over my head.
This is my first experience with Angela Carter's writing, but after listening to this, I want to find much more of her work to read because the prose and themes are exactly my vibe
As usual, some stories in this collection are great, and others are meh. Watch out for some visceral descriptions and sudden sexual aggressions. These stories are sometimes grim, sometimes vengeful, but almost always compelling. I love the use of language. Carter's imagery can make your skin crawl as you attempt to get the smell of moss and mildew out of your nose. These tales are disturbing, but I enjoyed experiencing them.
Loved it! Angela has a way with words in this little collection. She genuinely has fun with lexicon in ways I only dream of handling English language. Puss-in-Boots could be a fine short play, in the vein of Shakespearean comedy, slightly on the bawdy side. The Bloody Chamber is the perfection of gothic fiction. If you desire something more short, punchy, and surreal, The Snow Child or The Werewolf might be your perfect companions. Immensely dark, erotic, and self-aware. I can't recommend it enough.
some stories (the bloody chamber, the lady of the house of love) were pretty great, some were just not it for me. i personally found it a bit repetitive and not captivating enough to keep my attention, but i appreciated the gothic elements.
I thought the stories were good, overall, but some of the topics and themes made me uncomfortable. Also, sometimes the writing is hard to follow and overly complicated
I was expecting great things from this book, having had it recommended to me numerous times. I found that I just couldn't get into it at all. Her style, I felt, was overly flowery and uninspiring. I had to give up halfway through the first story.
not sure what my expectations were exactly but i cannot help but feel this turned out different from what i thought it would be. not bad but different. it is clear that carter is a talented and capable author; she has a good hold of the dark fairy tale and the gothic. there is, after all, a certain level of competence and ability required in order to imitate and fully commit to the prose style fitting to each story should they have been original fairy tales dated from 17th, 18th, 19th century. however, sometimes that the style would make the stories difficult to focus on and truly immerse oneself into ('puss-in-boots' being the particular example). regardless, i can see why some of the stories have haunted generations and will haunt me. favourites were 'the bloody chamber', 'the courtship of mr lyon', 'the erl-king', 'the lady in the house of love' and 'the company of werewolves'.
Angela Carter is the master of feminist magical fairy tales. A must-read for anyone.
3.5
Unpredictable recollection of tales, read with an open mind, but in the end, I loved it!
Bisogna premettere che le raccolte di racconti, per quanto mi sforzi di leggerne almeno un paio all'anno, non riescono mai a soddisfarmi. L'idea del cambio di tono -e punto di vista- applicata a fiabe "comuni" è interessante, così come lo è la scrittura che sa essere al tempo stesso lussureggiante e lineare. È stato un saliscendi impervio: alcuni racconti li ho amati moltissimo (The Lady of the House of Love, The Earl King, The Snow Child), altri invece li ho trovati mediamente vuoti, più simili alla ripetizione del concetto che tiene insieme la raccolta come esercizio di stile. Tre stelline e mezzo.
As I’m studying this for school I don’t have the most original thoughts about this yet. I may add more once I have a better understanding of it, all I know is that I enjoyed this. Just like any short story collection there were some I didn’t care for and some I loved. The Bloody Chamber and The Erl King are probably the most standout ones of the collection. My least favourites were Puss in Boots and The Courtship of Mr Lyon as they just weren’t memorable. I loved Carter’s critiques on patriarchy and sexuality. They’re not handed to you on a silver platter but are woven into the story leaving you with questions and ideas that make you engage with the text. I also just love gothic tales in general. So much angst. All in all, I found this collection to be masterfully crafted and something I’ll be happy to return back to once I’m not studying it. Unlike other collections I’ve read it feels like these stories were purposefully written and inform one another, it’s hard to get the full picture with just one of the stories.
Loved a portion of the stories, some weren't favorites. Overall an awesome collection of fairy tale reimaginings. 4 out of 5 stars
Okay. I was super excited when I saw that this short story collection was finally in audiobook format, but I'm not going to lie . . . I feel like reading it probably would have helped me appreciate the writing and metaphors of the stories. In other words, there were parts that I was like, "Man, I wish I wasn't driving so I could write this quote down," or, "I feel like there's some underlying meaning and/or symbolism that I'm missing, but that maybe I would get if I was holding the book in my hand." I think this missing element led me to have an overall underwhelming experience with this book. There were 2 or 3 stories that I really liked and others that left yucked-out or very confused. The narrators were fantastic though.
Highlights
Her voice is filled with distant sonorities, like reverberations in a cave: now you are at the place of annihilation, now you are at the place of annihilation. And she is herself a cave full of echoes, she is a system of repetitions, she is a closed circuit. "Can a bird sing only the song it knows or can it learn a new song?"
She counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden.
He forced himself to master his shyness, which was that of a wild creature
I felt as giddy as if I were on the edge of a precipice; I was afraid, not so much of him, of his monstrous presence, heavy as if he had been gifted at birth with more specific gravity than the rest of us, the presence that, even when I thought myself most in love with him, always subtly oppressed me... No. I was not afraid of him; but of myself. I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes. I hardy recognized myself from his descriptions of me and yet, and yet - might there not be a grain of beastly truth in them? And, in the red firelight, I blushed again, unnoticed, to think he might have chosen me because, in my innocence, he sensed a rare talent for corruption.
And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.
Take off my clothes for you, like a ballet girl? Is that all you want of me?
‘There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer’
His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.
The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.
and, since her fear did her no good, she ceased to be afraid.
I think it’s beautiful how in many of Carter’s tales, the woman, usually passive and weak, takes back control of the narrative.
I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning.
In the Erl-King, Carter uses such beautiful imagery; dark, beautiful, almost nonsensical
Vous serez ma proie. You have such a fine throat, m'sieu, like a column of marble.
Fun reference to Song of Songs, so carnal and sexual, really a reflection of Carter’s writing in general
Then I realized, with a shock of surprise, how it must have been my innocence that captivated him - the silent music, he said, of my unknowingness, like La Terrasse des audiences au clair de lune played upon a piano with keys of ether.
To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case. To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case - that is, to be killed. This is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman.
I love this quote, she wrote it in an epigraph for The Bloody Chamber and is referring to how women are portrayed in by the male gaze. I believe she’s especially referring to Justine, the Marquis de Sade’s heroine. Such a common phrase, the “object of desire”, yet it implies a lot…
He made me put on my choker, the family heirloom of one woman who had escaped the blade. With trembling fingers, I fastened the thing about my neck. It was cold as ice and chilled me. He twined my hair into a rope and lifted it off my shoulders so that he could the better kiss the downy furrows below my ears; that made me shudder. And he kissed those blazing rubies, too. He kissed them before he kissed my mouth. Rapt, he intoned: *Of her apparel she retains/Only her sonorous jewellery!
This book appears on the shelf ya
This book appears on the shelf Teen 🤓
This book appears on the shelf Teen/YA
