‘Off the TBR shelf’ book review – “The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter

This was my May ‘off the shelf’ book – a book that has been hanging around in my life, neglected and unread. I set myself the challenge this year to finally give at least some of these books the attention they deserve – it has certainly made my reading year so far a lot cheaper than usual. 

I have read a couple of Angela Carter books before and count The Magic Toyshop as one of my favourite reads ever, but I have always wanted to read more. She is a towering and enigmatic figure in modern English literature, a true icon, made the more so, no doubt, by her untimely death from lung cancer in 1992 at the age of 51. She wrote nine novels as well as a number of short story collections, poetry, drama, children’s books and non-fiction. Two of her novels (The Magic Toyshop and The Company of Wolves) have been adapted for film and she was closely involved with both. She was an intellectual, a feminist, outspoken and uncompromising, as you will see if you go on to YouTube and watch any of the interviews with her that are there. 

I am not sure when I purchased The Bloody Chamber but my edition dates from 1995 – 28 years unread! I cannot even begin to count how many times it must have moved house with me! It wasn’t what I expected. For starters it is a collection of short stories, which I am embarrassed to say I had not realised. There are ten stories in all and most are re-tellings of popular myths or fairy tales. For example, the titular story ‘The Bloody Chamber’, and the longest in the collection is a re-telling of ‘Bluebeard’, ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ is a re-telling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, and ‘The Company of Wolves’ is a re-telling of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. The final story in the collection ‘Wolf Alice’ (and yes, apparently, the band did name themselves after this story) references both ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’ stories. 

Carter hated them being described as her ‘versions’ of the tales and preferred to see them as drawing out “the latent content from the traditional stories”. She was apparently particularly angered by her American publisher’s reference to the collection as “adult” stories. Yes, there is explicit sexual content here, including sado-masochism in the opening story. But I think Carter would argue that these dynamics were already in those stories, which are part of a largely oral tradition and have been told and re-told countless times with people choosing to place emphasis on different elements. 

I am reminded of one of the books I read during the Covid pandemic lockdown, Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who also draws on traditional tales to draw out the essence of the feminine in the stories that are handed down through the generations in communities, its raw, even divine, power. These stories transcend social, cultural even gender boundaries. In her tales, Carter’s trademark magical realism is powerfully at work. For me, the opening story was not the best. I found it dragged a little. By the time I got to the third story, ‘The Lion’s Bride’ (I read the first few in order, but then jumped around), I felt the writing was unrestrained, Carter’s wild imagination was in full flow and the words just poured off the page. The shortest story in the book ‘The Snow Child’ at less than two pages is a master-class in flash fiction, though I must admit I found the content of this one quite uncomfortable in a 2023 context. But that is what these stories are meant to do, make you shift in your seat. 

Recommended because everyone should read some Angela Carter. 

My next neglected book is going to be a children’s book, The Doll’s House by Rumer Godden, which I think has only been in my possession for a couple of years – a relative newcomer!