Angela Carter was one of the most vivid voices of the twentieth century. When she died in 1992 at the age of fifty-one, she had published fifteen books of fiction and essays; outrage at her omission from any Booker Prize shortlists led to the foundation of the Orange Prize.
Angela Carter sent her friend Susannah Clapp postcards from all over the world, missives which form a paper trail through her life. The pictures she chose were sometimes domestic, sometimes flights of fantasy and surrealism. The messages were always pungent.
Here, Susannah Clapp uses postcards - the emails of the twentieth century - to travel through Angela Carter's life, and to evoke her anarchic intelligence, fierce politics, rich language and ribaldry, and the great swoops of her imagination.
[Twenty years ago I went for the first time to Angela Carter's study](Turtleback Books, 2 February 2012, borrowed from the library)
I read this for 2017 Popsugar Reading Challenge. The category is 'a book about an interesting woman'.I'm a fan of Angela Carter.
I haven't read all of Carter's work and know very little of her as person.
This short book offers insight into her private life and her life as a writer who probably didn't get quite as much success and fame as she deserved.
I enjoyed the anecdotes about Carter as a writer much more.
If anything, I felt the book was too short and could have happily read another two or three hundred pages. Carter is on my list of author's to read so I definitely want to read more of her.
I don't feel the book focused enough on Carter as a person. There was a lot of space wasted describing how she looked and how she spoke which I felt was trivial. I wanted to know about her as a writer, her inspiration, her life. I did find it interesting she had anorexia which I didn't know.
This short little book is a clever way of writing a biography. It's more of a personal tribute to losing a loved one. I found it very sad at times but compelling and interesting if a little thin at times.
I was surprised by how much is covered in just 75 pages. Less is clearly more here. I really liked the way the author gives insight into Carter by presenting a postcard and then revealing snippets from Carter's life at the time the postcard was sent.
