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The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
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The Magic Toyshop

by Angela Carter

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788205,540 (3.92)57
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Penguin (Non-Classics) (1996), Paperback, 208 pages

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this is less of a review than a commentary on my experience reading and rereading this book. i loved this the first time i read it, in 2006. the language, scenes and characters stuck with me for a really long time. even three years later i was able to remember some of carter's beautiful phrases and imagery, and so i decided to read this again.
this time though it felt a little anti-climatic; i didn't experience such deep sympathy with melanie, finn, francie and margaret. it is an intriguing story, and perhaps not knowing what to expect had kept me in rapt attention. (not knowing in the craziest, best possible way! carter creates bizarre scenes in the theater, in the garden, around the kitchen table that are superbly described, even as they are strangely unfinished, or maybe even as i was enthralled i was left grasping for meaning). anyway, this time i wasn't able to feel as deeply with the characters as i did the first time. knowing how the story ends has not prevented me from identifying with characters in other books upon a reread. so i am not quite sure what this has to do with... ( )
  InJest | Oct 13, 2009 |
Isn't life scary? Everything that you hold dear is predicated on such flimsy foundations. A superb fairy tale, coming of age novel from Angela Carter. What an excellent writer she is and, speaking as a bloke, I always feel that Carter has the greatest gift in explaining what it means to be a woman. Angela Carter explores the roles that relationships force upon us and illuminates exactly what feminist movement is talking about.

Do read this as an introduction and then go onto the more full-blooded novels "Wise Children" and "Nights at the Circus" ( )
  dylanwolf | Oct 5, 2009 |
This will go for all of the books by Angela Carter here, not just related to this particular title. Carter is the author who brought it home to me, at the height of all the hype and posturing around the 'Wimmins' movement, that the female writer brings something particular yet universal to bear on literature. Through her re-telling or re-theming of Fairy Tales, especially, Carter also re-mythologizes the writing space (like Holdstock, et al, even though her style and purpose are very different). ( )
  OwnedLibrarian | Jul 1, 2009 |
The writing's very elaborate and discursive at the beginning, which has a distancing effect. Not transparent-glass distance, but something cloudy and distracting: looking at the words instead of through them at the story.It did clear. I don't know if the writing style changed or if I became accustomed to it, and the story was disturbing enough that I don't want to reread to find out. It's the total destruction of Miranda's comfortable life and self that bothers me -- nothing left by the end, and her perverse boyfriend isn't much consolation. ( )
  krisiti | Jul 1, 2009 |
A darkly, disturbingly brilliant description of a young woman's journey into adolescence and of trying on different roles (child, mother, bride, wife) for size on and off the stage. Thrown into an unknown world and an unknown family, Melanie begins to understand others in relation to herself and tries to find her way. Angela Carter shows understanding of a 15-year-old's thinking while placing the protagonist in an environment which enables her to live out her fantasies and nightmares. ( )
1 vote rainbowfaerie | May 26, 2009 |
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The summer she was fifteen, Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood.
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From the cover: "This crazy world whirled about her, men and women dwarfed by toys and puppets, where even the birds were mechanical and the few human figures went masked... She was in the night again, and the doll was herself."
Melanie walks in the midnight garden, wearing her mother's wedding dress; naked she climbs the apple tree in the black of the moon. Omens of disaster, swiftly following, transport Melanie from rural comfort to London, to the Magic Toyshop.

To the red-haired, dancing Finn, the gentle Francie, dumb Aunt Margaret and Uncle Philip. Francie plays curious night music, Finn kisses fifteen-year-old Melanie in the mysterious ruins of the pleasure gardens. Brooding over all is Uncle Philip: Uncle Philip, with blank eyes the colour of wet newspaper, making puppets the size of men, and clockwork roses. He loves his magic puppets, but hates the love of man for woman, boy for girl, brother for sister...

In this, her second novel, (awarded the 1967 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) Angela Carter's brilliant imagination and startling intensity of style explore and extend the nature and boundaries of love.

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