Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of such contemporary masters of supernatural fiction as Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, and Kelly Link, who introduces this edition of Carter's most celebrated book, published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of her birth.
In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter 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.
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[I REMEMBER HOW, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother's apartment into the unguessable country of marriage - THE BLOODY CHAMBER]***
(Vintage Books, 13 July 2006, first published 1979, paperback, 149 pages, bought from @AmazonUK, set text for @OpenUniversity course starting October 2019)
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I've read this collection before in Burning Your Boats, Carter's collected short stories. These were my favourite stories in the massive collection so it was a pleasure to read them again. I loved every story. The title story is one of the best stories I've ever read. I also loved The Lady of the House of Love about an ageing vampire. This collection contains the stories that inspired the move In the Company of Wolves including Wolf Alice and The Company of Wolves, both of which I loved even though they disturbed me. The stories in this collection are among my favourites. I loved every one.
