The prose was far too ornate and, dare I say it, purple for my tastes.

While I'm certainly not one to generally complain about slow moving, there comes a point when my eyes glaze over and I start thinking "enough with the descriptions already, can we have some sort of plot soon?" ( )

Ten adult adaptations of fairy stories. These are most certainly not for the easily shocked. The title story 'The Bloody Chamber' is a retelling of the Bluebeard myth and is chilling indeed.'The Courtship of Mr Lyon' puts both Beauty and the Beast in a new light. 'The Lady of the House of Love' is a Vampire tale told from a completely different angle from the usual.'The Werewolf',although only two pages long,is a little gem,telling of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf,but yet again the well-known story is turned on its head.So all of these tales are full of horror told in Carter's very own unique style. ( )

Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber: A very good collection of short stories.
We had to read this for our English Literature course and I'm very glad I did. Carter is a very talented writer and this book deserves the recognition and awards it got.
The best stories to watch out for are;

The Bloody Chamber,
The Tiger's Bride
The Snow Child
The Werewolf

Carter's language is very elaborate, so if you're going to read it, do as my English tutor said; "Read actively. Have a pen in your hand and a dictionary next to you". Trust me, she was right.
A very good read if you can understand what is going on. All the stories are based on old fairytales (i.e. The Tiger's Bride is based on Beauty and The Beast) so if you can work out how the story is similar and find links you should be able to appreciate the stories.

Writing is beautiful, elaborate, highly perfumed. Carter revisits familiar fairy tales in a fascinating way., which some say is feminist. I guess it depends on what you mean by "feminist." I don't see it, but there's lots of sex, death, murder, magic. ( )

Do you have the courage to enter Angela Carter's quirky realm of magical realism? One shouldn't confuse her work as "retellings" of familiar European fairy tales; she in fact sees them as new stories churned out by taking inspiration from the former.

I'm very happy to note that her writing style vaguely reminds me of Anne Rice's--lush & imaginative.

The Bloody Chamber >> Bluebeard as a story totally came alive for me in this gothic tale. There are references to Marquis de Sade--of his "smell of spiced leather" and his well-stocked library full of sadistic pornography.

Even Bill Willingham's character in his "Fables" series failed to capture the darkness that is Bluebeard. A lot of allusions to the habits of Elizabeth Bathory though. I miss my Jeanne Kalogridis books :(

2 Variations of "Beauty and the Beast":
The Courtship of Mr. Lyon >> Finally a story that provides us with more than a one dimensional look at Beauty's "pure & chaste" personality. It is a story of the transformation of the Beast aided by Beauty.

The Tiger's Bride >> "My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders..."

Puss-in-Boots >> I laughed out loud to this story; where all the stock types and jokes of the commedia dell'arte are used. The cat himself is the narrator: a master of witty lines teeming with rhetorical questions and exclamations.

The Erl-King >> an unfamiliar bit of fable since this one is based on the German legend of a goblin that haunts the Black Forest (reminds me of Baba Yoga) who lures wanderers to their doom. "...He piles up one on another against the wall, a wall of trapped birds."

The Snow Child >> a new spin on the jealousy & incest that surrounds this child borne of a wish & that of the parents who supposedly sired her.

The Lady of the House of Love >> "Can a bird sing only the song it knows, or can it learn a new song?" Do we have the capacity at all to learn something new, heedless of what the cards of life lay before us?

3 variations of "Red Riding Hood":
The Werewolf >> What if you found out who is the real werewolf? Would you choose betrayal over survival?

The Company of Wolves >> Red Riding Hood refuses to feel fear: "she burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody's meat."

Wolf-Alice >> think Gothic castles & dank graveyards...

Book Details:

Title The Bloody Chamber
Author Angela Carter
Reviewed By Purplycookie ( )

The prose is clear and often seductive. It's intelligent, sharp, funny, romantic, and dark.

I love me some fucked up fairy tails. Except for the lamentably poor (and over-long) Puss-n-Boots, this collection is fantastic. Her short shorts are especially visceral. ( )

Whether or not Angela Carter’s stories are indeed retellings/reworkings of fairy tales or fresh stories containing familiar elements of fairy tales seems to be a point of some conjecture amongst literary circles. Whatever you decide them to be, these interpretations vary a great deal in tone and length, with the title story being half the length of the entire book. Carter’s work is notably sexual and subversive in nature, with dramatic and gothic overtones that permeate every facet of her storytelling. Though more adult in tone, and certainly not suitable for younger readers, Carter’s work should not be dismissed as mere erotic fairy tales. There is so much more to these stories, emotionally and culturally. The descriptions alone are sumptuous and palpable.

The Bloody Chamber is based on the tale of Bluebeard. A teenage girl marries an older, wealthy French Marquis and is whisked away to live in his castle. When he is called away, he leaves the keys to the castle with his young wife, with strict instructions not to unlock one particular door. But the young woman cannot resist taking a look, only to discover the true extent of her husbands sadistic and perverse nature. Typical of Carter, this tale is more sexual in nature, revolving around the sadistic Marquis, and his infatuation with his previous wives. Shocking and gruesome, yet one of the most powerful stories in this collection.

A beautiful tale of love and loss, The Courtship of Mr Lyon is a relatively familar adaptation of the story of Beauty and the Beast. After his car breaks down, Beauty's penniless father is given aid by a stranger who becomes angry when he steals a perfect white rose for his daughter. He is allowed to leave with the rose but ordered to send Beauty for dinner. The stranger, revealed as a leonine beast falls in love with her and allows her to leave but when she does not return he begins to succumb to heartbreak and only Beauty's love can save his life and humanity.

The Tiger's Bride also contains elemens of Beauty and the Beast, but with a very different ending, a reversal of any I have read or seen in the past. This is not Disney!

Puss-in-Boots is an elaborate and garish tale of a cat named Figaro who lives a life of freedom and debaunchery with his young human companion. But when the young man falls in love, it is left to Figaro to factor their union and extricate the girl from her unhappy marriage. Gloriously over the top, this story had me smiling.

Possibly my favourite story due to my love of folklore and nature, The Erl-King is based on many a folk tale of the man of the woods. A young woman is lured to the mysterious Erl-Kings's home deep in the woods, where she discovers his true plan for her and is forced to escape by any means. Dark and sinister, Carter's writing practically had me drooling.

An interesting spin on the tale of Snow White, The Snow Child especially intrigued me as I have recently read Neil Gaiman's adaptation. In this story however, it is the Count who wishs for a young girl as white as snow, quickly becoming obsessed with his creation, much to the dismay of his wife. This story is short and brutal and left me feeling quite cold. No pun intended.

A fabulously morose tale, The Lady of the House of Love concerns a young soldier who stumbles across a vampire living in her mansion. The pure and innocent young man has a curious effect on the campire who is not content to simply feed on him. Another masterful example of Angela Carter's beautiful prose.

The Werewolf is a slightly twisted tale of a girl (Red Riding Hood) who visits her grandmother, only to make a horrifying discovery. But what the girl does was most suprising to me!

The Company of Wolves is a slightly closer adaptation of the Red Riding Hood fable, with the girl meeting a young man in the woods on route to her grandmother's cabin, only to discover that he has beaten her to it and is not what he seems. With words straight from the fairy tale itself, this story put a big grin on my face. Delightful.

The third wolf story in this collection, Wolf-Alice creeped me out. Perhaps because Carter's descriptions of a feral little girl were so realistic, I could almost imagine this child ripping apart chunks of flesh with her teeth!

Carter’s use of language is sophisticated and intoxicating, I found myself in utter awe of her powerfully descriptive writing through which she has masterfully twisted these predominantly patriarchal stories into tales of feminine power, liberation and sexuality. These stories are not for the faint-hearted though; they are dark, cruel and often violent. Carter once described herself as drawn to “Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious”. But perhaps most of all, the stories in The Bloody Chamber are about desire, both feminine and masculine and altogether inescapable. I cannot express how much I admire what Angela Carter has achieved and created here, I will certainly be reading more. Highly recommended.

A short but enjoyable collection of short stories exploring "beast" feminism in the form of classic fairy tales. While I hesitate to call myself a feminist, I am a big believer in the validity of sexual hunger in women, not just the romantic yearning for a husband and children. Carter explores this theme in deep linguistic shades of black and red, with vivid and luscious, if violent, imagery. It was a treat to read such delicious works of fiction that both spoke to me and excited my love of fairy tales. ( )

For this book, Carter rewrote a collection of fairy tales with a feminist twist. What I found most interesting was that she managed to give me a taste of how fairy tales used to be told - they were cautionary tales that were often filled with fear and violence. A far cry from the feel-good children's stories we know so well. ( )

A collection of alternative fairy tales - gory, sexy and compulsive reading. A classic collection. ( )

Interesting ( )

Gorgeous re-write of the story of Bluebeard, so enjoyable. Other stories were good too. ( )

Carter has a sense of language and metaphor that does justice to the nature of the fairy tales she reinterprets in this collection. I find something else to marvel at, pay more attention to, or recognize as an allusion to something else with every (repeated) reading. This is quite simply a fabulous book. ( )

A collection of classic fairy tales, re-worked to "give them a feminist slant." Why? I'm not entirely sure. The writing is excellent and I would definitely be looking for more of Carter's work, I'm just not sure that the fairy tales worked for me. I haven't read anything I would consider a fairy tale in years and I often found myself wondering how the original work ended or how this version differed from the classic tale. Some stories - Puss-in-Boots for example, and the title work (a retelling of the story of Bluebeard and his wives) were very entertaining. Others - The Erl-King comes to mind - were unfamiliar to me. My favorite was undoubtedly The Tiger's Bride, the story of Beauty and the Beast (and Beauty's worthless wretch of a father). Full of atmosphere and fabulous detail, but not a fairy tale you'll be reading to the littles before bed. ( )

In The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter takes a handful of fairy tales and rewrites them. From the eponymous tale of Bluebeard to the chilling fable of Snow White to the rollicking hijinks of Puss-in-Boots, Carter’s renditions of classic stories breathes dark, sensual, baroque life.

Most of these stories aren’t original retellings. That is, they don’t add any new twist to the tale that will shock you. Quite a few of the stories simply transplant the settings and one or two details. With that said, I enjoyed this anthology anyway, because even if she’s only retelling the stories, Angela Carter does it in a language that is magical. Her powers of description are immense and her metaphors stayed with me hours after I finished reading the book. My favourites were “The Bloody Chamber” because Bluebeard has always been my favourite fairy tale, but I also really liked the short blasting power of “The Snow Child.”

If you have no interest in fairy tales, I’m not sure if you will enjoy this book. But if you’re a fan, or if you’re curious to see the lushness behind many Disney-fied stories, Angela Carter is for you. ( )

The Bloody Chamber was recommended by a friend of mine upon my mentioning that I sometimes enjoy retellings of classic fairy tales. It's a collection of short stories, retold in a number of ways- some change the historical setting of the stories, such as in the titular story, while others change the moral of the story, such as in "The Werewolf." Some were easily recognizable- "The Bloody Chamber" is clearly a revision of Bluebeard- while others weren't as clear to me- some, like "the Erl-King" and "The Tiger's Bride" were completely new to me, though I assume some of that is simply caused by a lack of familiarity with some fairy tales. Although the stories in The Bloody Chamber are more explicit and sometimes more gruesome than the versions that most Americans are familiar with (see Disney versions), they were pretty much on par with the more traditional versions in that respect (see original Brothers Grimm versions). The back of the book refers to the sensuality of the stories repeatedly and, in several reviews, the feminist aspect- neither one was particularly apparent to me, which I consider a good thing. These were neither particularly feminist, unlike some more self-concious retellings, nor "sensual," which I find too often means that the author has introduced sexuality into inappropriate places. Some of the stories did give the female characters more active roles, and some did involve sex, or sexuality, so in a very literal sense they may be feminist and sensual- I just want to separate the unfortunate connotations that these terms often have from these stories. Some of the stories were excellent- I especially recommend "The Bloody Chamber," "The Tiger's Bride," and "Wolf-Alice"- while others were only acceptable- "Puss-in-Boots," for example, was cute but not particularly amazing. Thumbs up for the writing style, which is descriptive without being verbose, and precise without being confusing, brusque, or hard to follow. ( )

Bizarre, feminist takes on classic fairy tales. ( )

An all-time favorite by an author at the top of her form. Carter's reworked fairy tales are dark and luminous at the same time.
A marvel of a book.
-- Michael

Spooky, sharp and delightfully well-crafted. Carter's stories are great "re-visitations" of old myths and fairytales with subtle, yet strong and well-employed connective tissue (details, themes, specific words etc.) that string the tales together, making them a true collection, as opposed to just a group of stories. If you like this, and you like poetry, be sure to check out "Transformations" by Anne Sexton. ( )

Quite good. A collection of reworkings of fairy tales. It's neat to see stories like "Beauty and the Beast" get several different treatments. ( )

This was my first book by Carter. I wanted to read her work because I ran across some book-related quotes of hers that I really liked. This was a small collection of rather twisted stories. The stories are almost all retellings of fairy tales or myths (Little Red Riding Hood, Puss-in-Boots, etc.) and almost all are erotic and violent. And the female characters are not simply victims or passive acceptors of what fate has dealt them; they're all, in their own particular ways, strong and feminine.

I'm not sure yet if Carter writes in other genres (fantasy, aside from Pratchett and Gaiman, doesn't usually appeal to me), but if she does, I will certainly read more of her work. She writes interesting stuff. The Puss-in-Boots story in this collection was worth the price of the book. ( )

Quite possibly my favorite of Carter's works. The Bloody Chamber is dark, gorgeous and almost deSadean in its subversion of the traditional fairy tale.
Stories include treatments of Bluebeard (in the title story), Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, a vampiric Sleeping Beauty and no fewer than 3 tales inspired by Red Riding Hood, one of which "The Company of Wolves" was the basis for the independent film of the same name, the screenplay of which was also penned by the illustrious Ms. Carter. ( )

A great collection of Carter's short stories that deal with fairy tales. Carter's use of language is amazing. She varies her tone from story to story, so the reader never feels in a rut. ( )