Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories: 75th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

This book is probably the worst book I've read in my life.

Claiming to create a retelling of fairy tales, Angela Carter writes stories showing how women can take back some of the power in those fairy tales. Her ideas are great; the execution is horrifying and downright disappointing.

While she may have been going for a "Satire" approach, these short stories go too far and do not seem feminist to me in the least bit. Describing a girl's first period as being started because "a wolf... must have nibbled her cunt while she was sleeping" serves absolutely no purpose, and you cannot claim that the story is about "women taking their agency back" when half the stories are about teenagers or pre-pubescent teenagers willingly having sex with adult men/monsters.

Some reviews have claimed that these books are supposed to be read as the men's sexual desires actually representing the women's inner desires; thus, when the characters give in to the male's advances, they are really giving into their own. Through her stories featuring bestiality, pedophilia, incest, Carter basically asks the question "what if the claim that girls are really asking for it when they are raped were true?"

Furthermore, from a writing perspective I found her stories to be boring and not well written. Many praise her elaborate writing style, but it seems as though she is trying to hide the lack of substance in her stories with flowery writing. Some of the descriptions felt pulled straight out of a fanfiction. The plots of each short story are also severely lacking; even the stories which otherwise do better trying to present her messages fail due to disuse of characters and plot points.

This book should be marketed as erotica. If it were marketed as such, I'd say it's fine. But this is not a masterful genre-defying book of feminist prose; it's a collection of erotic rewrites of fairy tales. Some have a bit more meaning, but for the most part, it's just erotica. If you enjoy that, I'd encourage reading it! She certainly goes in depth describing the sex, and it probably composes at least a third of the book. But if you're looking for what the book markets itself as, I'd look elsewhere - though I do always encourage people to read things for themselves to decide.

Content Warnings

river_dithers's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I read this book for the second time, and I love it just as much! Carter's command of words is incredible, and I had to reach for my phone to find meanings of certain words. That does not mean it wasn't beautiful. My favourite story was Lady of the House of Love, and I loved the tortured characters. The beastliness of this collection is surprising, but enticing. It forced me to confront my own preconceptions about femininity and humanity.

Content Warnings