If I had only one word to describe Angela Carter, I think I might go with "audacious". One lonely adjective, however, never satisfied Carter or me.

Carter's imagination is dark, elemental and disturbing, and it wends its way through a rich intellectual landscape. I happen to share Carter's interests in certain motifs, themes and tropes -- fairy tales, folklore, the ocean and forest in myth, and others -- and the rich variety of topics, settings and structures in the collection was engaging.

Carter's prose does tend towards the purple, and while on the one hand it is an essential part of her charming audacity, on the other hand it can be excessive. It can even tire the eye so that it may miss or fail to appreciate inspired images like a tumbledown house "with a look of oracular blindness", a child with "a whim of iron", or Autumn giving the forest "a sickroom hush". Sometimes, Carter indulges her purple tendencies under the auspices of a believably pompous or flowery narrator, but different readers may find that mechanism more or less effective. Some stories are not so hothouse lush in their verbiage, so I'd encourage a first-time Carter reader to flip past any stories that bother them, rather than putting the book down.

Some of her revised fairy tales from The Bloody Chamber, as has been noted elsewhere, are more amusing than insightful in the light of further developments in the genre. At their best, however, her work, mythic and everyday alike, exposes and owns human ugliness and opens the door briefly to primal beauties. My favorite is "Ashputtle, or the Mother's Ghost: three versions of one story", which first analyzes, then strips and distills the Cinderella myth to its haunting bones.

Nota bene: Carter's stories are sometimes gory, and several include scenes of sexual violence. ( )

Contains the Bloody Chamber stories, as well as so many others. Check out the Lizzie Borden stories- they're lovely. ( )

Tired of the usual pomo bad boys? Read Angela Carter. Now. Carolyn See said in the Washington Post that it is "a treasure chest of literary and aesthetic experience . . . mysterious, glamorous, beautiful." One of my professors described the quality of her prose by likening it to eating frosting right out of a can. Carter's imaginative powers are fully her own; her work is unlike anything else you'll encounter. Her novels are dense, rich, hugely inventive and unconventional. The stories are too, but you can take them in smaller doses, which can be a big advantage. Some of the most popular are reworkings of folklore or fairy tales, recast with uncanny magic. Carter's work is deeply feminist, but in a way that goes beyond the usual boundaries of empowerment and liberation. If I had to make comparisons, I might describe it as a cocktail of Kathy Acker, Italo Calvino and Roald Dahl.

If you need linear plots and are bothered by ornate or baroque use of language, this may not work for you. But if you're willing to go wherever Carter takes you, you won't be let down. I've had this book since it came out and still haven't finished with it. ( )