The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories: 75th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions)

Angela Carter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143107615 ISBN 13: 9780143107613

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2015

Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, and Beauty and the Beast, giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Review:

This is an amazing, captivating collection of stories based on fairy tales. They are not stories for children; Angela Carter makes the very adult undertones of many fairy tales explicit, with twists on the familiar versions that make these stories fun and quick (albeit dark and graphic) reads if you're just looking for an interesting plot. However, there is still plenty of subtext, and the brilliant prose is dripping with symbolism. These are stories you could read over and over and find new meanings and insights every time --By jana comstock on 28 November 2016

Nobody ever used language quite the way Angela Carter did--few would ever dare in this dumbed-down day and age of ours. Yet still, more than thirty years after the author's untimely death, her unique way with words continues to captivate, inspire and intoxicate like tongues of Dionysian fire dancing upon the blessed lips of each new generation. These are words to make the heart sing and the imagination soar; beautiful yet exquisitely precise, evocative, fearless, erudite, occupying that rarefied realm where prose and poetry seem to share the self-same space like lovers in disembodied ecstasy. --By Terrance Aldon Shaw on 20 December 2015

About the Author:

Angela Carter (1940-1992) wrote nine novels and numerous short stories, as well as nonfiction, radio plays, and the screenplay for Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves, based on her story of the same name. She won numerous literary awards, traveled and taught widely in the United States, and lived in London.