Angela Carter - The Blood Chamber BOOK REVIEW
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- Опубліковано 29 жов 2023
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You’ve inspired me to make my own book discussion channel… I just got my camera and I am working towards shooting an intro this week. Thanks for sharing your vision, Cliff!
Good luck ! Hope you make it
Keep sharing your passion for literature!
Which camera did you get if I can ask?!?
mate, your final words and ruminations were really spectacular. Carter's book is a masterpiece I feel. I have never got it out of my head. Its one of those books that leads a red imprint in your mind
I LITERALLY just finished this book, what incredible timing!
Carter was always the closest to Anna Kavan for me. A very lyrical writer with great imagery. Would love a review of Carter’s Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman - very overlooked work.
This writer is out of this world! Such depth.
A wonderous writer and sadly missed.
I loved this book, it was one of my best reads of 2022 !!
IT WAS ABOUT TIME!!
Bloody Chamber Cliff!!!
Looking forward to this one ❤️
My take on the Erl-King:
When I first read the Erl-King, at 15, I found it quite boring. But last night (now I'm 27) I was completely drawn into the feeric atmosphere of the forest, and charmed by the earthly nature of the Erl-King. And you have to compliment Carter on her writing, I thought this was the most beautifully written text of the whole book (so far).
I think that her vivid descriptions of the forest that intertwine with feelings and sensations gave a dream-like feel to the story, and it transports you, in my view, to that dream-like state we find ourselves in when so head over heels in an all-consuming passion, when everything else seems hung in the air. Very often you know, from your own gut or from friends' advice (or from the bird in the forest) that this passion will cause you great harm, but you just can't help it.
It was also very refreshing to read the story from a female point of view - in these kinds of stories, when the protagonist falls in love with a mermaid-like being, the genders are usually switched. And I found her account of this passion very intimate, very sensual, very far from cliché.
Carter also describes an almost childlike innocence to the Erl-King, but that is also a very dangerous innocence. It appears sometimes as the innocence of a wild animal that hunts to kill completely deprived of any moral feelings, good or bad, and at times, it seems like the deceptive entranced state that vampires put their victims into. A good friend of mine once told me something that I found very cynical at the time, but now I see a lot of wisdom behind her joke: she said that she would rather be hurt by a woman than by a man, because when a woman wants to screw you over, she goes ahead and screws you over. But a man screws you over unintentionally. He didn't mean to hurt you, he hurts you without even noticing you were there in the first place. I remembered this pearl of wisdom when reading the Erl-King. Something about the care with which he treated his captive birds, and the weaving of the cage for his new bird in the collection.
I think the Erl-King have these many faces - an unscrupulous vampire, a wild animal, a charming young man with good intentions but who fails to see women as more than playthings. But he is sensual, he is bewitching, his company is intimate and magic, still we know he'll do us harm, we know he keeps birds in cages, that his magical world can be alienating and that what we once took for beautiful singing was actually our soul wailing. I think everybody has met a man like this at some point in their lives.
Good to see you Clifford. I wondered where you’ve been. 👍
Wow, 9 years mate. That’s an exceptional track record. There must be something publishable in that.
Thrilled to see some love going the way of the Company of Wolves movie, a film I’ve been fascinated by since discovering it in my mid teens. Excellent review, as always. Happy anniversary!
Excellent choice, for Halloween.
I remember finding The Company of Wolves, when I went down a rabbit hole, after reading the actual Brothers Grimm stories, and learning how many works of literature, that used them to make new stories.
I was 7 or 8, and The Company of Wolves movie, had come out, and I saw it at about 10 years old, and fell in love with the girl playing Red Riding Hood. 😄
It really excited my English/Reading teacher, and shocked her, when I wrote a short story book report, on the Company of Wolves, with a short review of the movie, when I was in 6th grade.
She asked if I was reading the other stories, and I relieved her when I said that I’d only read that one, in a collection of Short Gothic Horror stories, which included other authors we had learned about.
I read the others a few years later, then again in High School.
I giggled when a friend handed in his report on The Children of the Corn, having only seen the movie, even after I told him how short the story was. I also tried to tell him the story wasn’t the same at all, and then learned he just had problems reading.
I took my own abilities for granted, and ended up helping him read the actual Children short story, and others, which my teacher was very happy about. I mean, like she’d never witnessed such a thing teaching yet. She was young, and a very good woman, who gave my buddy, an extra week to work with me. She also tutored him, and he went on to become someone who always had a book, and an honor roll student in middle school.
Definitely, will revisit this collection soon.
Get that Coffee!
Never been this early. I have this book on my TBR so I must get to it after this stellar review! Also, happy birthday Better Than Food🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉.
Hello!! 9 ans déjà! Bon anniversaire 😊
Best youtube channel pour les livres. Merci
Hell yeah man, thanks for talking about the book! Personally, got to go through the collection for my Bachelor's thesis in English philology, making an attempt of highlighting its influence on feminist and gothic writing through a postmodernist lens. There's so much to delve into! Definitely recommend it!
...Happy Birthday! ( some circle is closing as another is opening...
10:39....3 months? Went to Peach Dreamy Land for the requisite "year"......came back two years ago after 23 years!
oh i guess that's where the band 'wolf alice' got their name from then.
Very insightful of what a book is to writer. I've never heard of Carter before but sounds like I have to check her out. I was the 666th view, pretty cool Halloween.
great discussion, great stories. thought it bit unnecessary to linger on the 'contradictory feminism' in her work. whether something may be 'feminist literature' or just plain interesting for feminist analysis depends on the work and not on whatever pop culture makes of a political movement at present time. also feminist lit and theory has drawn a lot from figures like Freud, so nothing extraordinary there (see Julia Kristen for instance)
I was wondering who do you mean when you say she was associated with shallow steampunk circus fantasy? Do you mean Erin Morgenstern 😂 I love her books but they are shallow.
Speaking of steampunk fantasy with literary merit, have you ever tried China Mieville? It’s very interesting and often leans into surrealism. It’s more lovecraftian and more British marxism but it deals with ideas and language that’s creative and interesting.
Especially his more experimental later work.
Jane Eyre is fucking great!
Can you review look homeward angel by Thomas Wolfe or any of Thomas Wolfe's novels, please?
Love ya kiss kiss
Did no one else find this book incredibly pretentious and overwritten? I won’t even get into “The Snow Child” story, which covers topics I can’t mention in this comment. In this book at least, Carter seems to be showing off her extensive vocabulary and being shocking for the sake of being shocking. Feel free to flame away and disagree.
This host is sexxxxy 🔥