The Magic Toyshop

What an odd but fascinating book. At 15, Melanie is just beginning to discover her sexuality, and while her parents are on holiday she unearths her mother’s wedding dress, tries it on, and wanders through the garden at midnight. But her romantic dreams are cast aside when Melanie, her brother Jonathon and sister Victoria are suddenly sent to live with their Uncle Philip and Aunt Margaret, and Margaret’s brothers Francie and Finn. Margaret has been unable to speak since her wedding night (make of that what you will!), and communicates by writing on a chalkboard.

Philip owns the eponymous toyshop, and quickly apprentices Jonathon who has an affinity for building model ships. Fortunately Philip isn’t around much, which affords show more Melanie space to develop relationships with the others, especially her aunt. But Philip also expects the family to attend elaborate and disturbing performances by his handmade puppets, and stroke his ego by responding with great enthusiasm. Anything less risks his wrath. Philip rules the house with an iron hand, but is unable to break the strong bonds between Margaret and her brothers. Melanie gradually comes to understand the reality of life in this family, and shifts from passive victim to active resistance. Anything more and I’ll be in spoiler territory; suffice to say the dramatic final chapter is simultaneously shocking and satisfying, while still leaving several loose ends.

This book was my introduction to Angela Carter. I understand she’s not an easy author to read, but this is one of her more accessible books. I may have to try another one someday. show less

Need this to be made into the most ludicrous, salacious movie.

Although this novel reads as one of her most unpolished works (the succession of events and ideas feel loosely related at best; it is her sophomore effort so I can't help but admire how it portends her literary prowess all the same), I found that this ultimately worked in Carter's favor: I closed the book with an unfettered, indelible feeling loosened in me. Until its very end, the plot jerks you about like you are tied up with puppet strings. This uncanniness is bolstered by its indulgent third person narration and the immodest amount of allusions (we've got references to John Donne and art nouveau painting, what's there not to love). I also found myself particularly moved show more by the honesty of the dialogue, its earnest underbelly which gave this dark story a tender twist. Finn, in particular, I found to be refreshingly flawed and transluscent for an anti-hero. Some of the stuff he said absolutely shattered me; Melanie (oh dear dear Melanie -- how I adore you) the same.

For readers who need their faiytale stories to be perfectly wrought allegories, this is not for you. If this is an allegory, it is an allegory inverted and one which offers little solace. It turns the platitude "God works in mysterious ways" to its more irreverent degree. All the same, it is spectacular and affecting.

Angela Carter I LOVE YOU! show less

‘’Melanie had never seen uncle Philip. Once, when she was a little girl, he sent her a jack-in-the-box. He was a toymaker. When she opened the jack-in-the-box, a grotesque caricature of her own face leered from the head that leapt out at her.’’

Melanie’s parents die in a tragic accident while on vacation in the USA. Melanie and her siblings, Victoria and Jonathon, are sent to live with uncle Philip and aunt Margaret. They have to leave the comfort, security and luxury of their home and start a new life in London. In the shadow of uncle Philip, hiding from his tyrannical, sinister presence, Melanie finds herself thrown into the world of the adults with all its desires and dangers.

This is one of Angela Carter’s timeless, show more haunting masterpieces.

‘’She was still a beautiful girl. She went back to her own room and looked at herself again in her own mirror to see if that said different but, again, she was beautiful. Moonlight, white satin, roses. A bride. Whose bride? But she was, tonight, sufficient for herself and her own glory and did not need a groom.’’

Angela Carter creates an oneiric, haunting tale of a young woman whose life is broken. Her loneliness is absolute, her struggle to stay afloat in an unknown, potentially threatening, environment is constant. In the face of Melanie, Carter reflects themes that provide material for the finest of tales. Femininity, womanhood, sexuality. The fine line between enchanting seduction and emotional abuse. The search for freedom through books and fairytales and a world of make-believe and, ultimately, eternity.

‘’Meanwhile, the remaining leaves fell from the sycamore in the square and were swept into oblivion by the stiff brooms of council employees. The nights drew in earlier and earlier, clothed in sinister cloaks of mist like characters by Edgar Allan Poe. Melanie stood with her face against the cold glass of her window-pane, seeing not the bleak yard and the lights blossoming in the backs of other hoises but berries reddening on the hedges around home and field glinting with frost. Smoke from bonfires of dead leaves caught the throat.’’

With Bluebeard references throughout the story and the myth of Leda and the swan at its very heart, with toys and puppets and pre-Raphaelite paintings, Carter’s unique writing takes us to a world where one cannot tell the difference between dreams and nightmares, a world where the moonlight plays along with shadows in the thick night.

Beware.

‘’Melanie, was forever grey, a shadow. It was the fault of the wedding-dress night, when she married the shadows and the world ended. All this was taking place in an empty space at the end of the world.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

If I were to rate this book just on Angela Carter's beautiful prose, it would get 5 stars. Unfortunately, the story she's chosen to write is deeply unpleasant. I have enjoyed three of her books (Wise Children, The Bloody Chamber and Fireworks) but this one was a miss for me.

exquisite prose
By sally tarbox on 27 Sept. 2012
Format: Paperback
Utterly readable, magical tale in a surreal world (puts me somewhat in mind of Barbara Comyns' writing).
The novel opens with Melanie becoming aware of her approaching adulthood, dancing in the night time garden in her mother's wedding dress:
'Melanie let herself into the night and it snuffed out her daytime self at once, between two of its dark fingers...Trees laden to the plimsoll-line with a dreaming cargo of birds.'
But a sudden change of circumstances sees her and her siblings forced to live with the horrible Uncle Philip and his mute Irish wife and her two brothers. Uncle Philip's profession and passion is toymaking, specifically his lifesize puppets.
Amid the cold and show more gloom, Melanie forms a tentative friendship with Finn...
I found the ending rather abrupt with a lot of unanswered questions, but this is far outweighed by Ms Carter's brilliant writing style. show less

The Magic Toyshop was chosen by my very small book group as our November read, and I was quite simply delighted by it. This, was something of a surprise, because I am never very sure about novels which I think vaguely of as being ‘a bit odd.’ I put Angela Carter in the same category as Barbara Comyns – (rightly or wrongly), two writers I have only read once before, and have skirted around ever since. Some years ago, I read The Bloody Chamber stories – for another book group, and I did like it (though it is a bit odd).

The Magic Toyshop is fantastically imagined, brilliantly written, with intensity and a wonderful dream like quality. Characters and situations are instantly memorable, and it is a book I can imagine reading again. show more The writing is so beautiful, descriptions are simply glorious, I look forward to reading it again one day so I can fully appreciate them.

“Melanie let herself into the night and it snuffed out her daytime self at once, between two of its dark fingers.
The flowers cupped in the garden with a midnight, un-guessable sweetness, and the grass rippled and murmured in a small voice that was an intensification of silence. The stillness was like the end of the world. She was alone. In her carapace of white satin, she was the last, the only woman. She trembled with exaltation under the deep, blue, high arc of sky.”

Melanie is fifteen years old, the eldest of three siblings, she has a good life in her family home with its lovely garden, bedrooms to spare a Shetland pony and her happy parents. Her father, a writer, is at last enjoying some real success, and Melanie has grown up in a house that smells of money. While her parents are away the children are cared for by Mrs Rundle, who makes lots of bread pudding and has an obese cat.

At fifteen, Melanie is beginning to discover something of her sexuality, she’s curious, growing up fast, a child awakening, with her beloved Edward Bear never far away. One day she tries her mother’s wedding dress on and goes outside into the garden late at night, finding herself locked out of the house. She is forced to scramble awkwardly up a tree to her bedroom, ripping the dress in the process.

“She parcelled up the dress and stuck it in the fork of the tree. she could carry it up with her and put it away again in the trunk and no one would know it had been worn if they did not see the blood on the hem, and there was only a little blood. The cat put its head on one side and turned it sequin regard on the parcel; it stretched out its paddy paw and stroked the dress. Its paw was tipped with curved, cunning meat hooks. It had a cruel stroke. There was a ripping sound.”

Melanie is dismayed at the damage to her mother’s dress, feels like a foolish child, who will one day soon need to confess to what she’s done. However, the very next day a telegram arrives, and Melanie knows instantly what it contains, her parents have been killed. Melanie and her siblings are sent to live with relatives of her mother’s, Uncle Philip – who Melanie has only seen in an old wedding photograph – and his family in London.

To Melanie, this is not the London she has imagined London to be, and Uncle Philip is not the Uncle Philip of the photograph. Uncle Philip has a toyshop, there’s a puppet theatre in the basement, and Uncle Philip creates life size puppets which he cares for obsessively while seeming to hate everyone in the house. The household consist of red haired Aunt Margaret – struck dumb on her wedding day, cowed by her bullying husband and her two younger brothers Finn, who dances while the almost silent Francie, plays his music – at night, while Philip is out. Loving, gentle Aunt Margaret, loves Melanie and her siblings, particularly little Victoria, while Jonathon seems strangely self-sufficient.

At first Melanie is horribly alone and slightly disgusted by this strange new world, a dilapidated, dirty house and the two red haired Irish brothers, themselves none too clean, and her strangely silent aunt who communicates by scribbling on a pad. In time, Melanie find she loves her aunt, Finn and Francie, gradually becoming part of their world, she allies herself with them against the villainous Philip. She longs to give Aunt Margaret a present for Christmas, though none of them have any money, and Philip has no interest in celebrating Christmas.

Melanie finds herself drawn to Finn, though she is sometimes afraid of him too – not quite ready for the feelings he awakens in her.

“Everything went black in the shocking folds of his embrace. She was very startled and near to sobbing.
‘Caw, caw,’ echoed his raincoat.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘It is only poor Finn, who will do you no harm.’
She recovered herself a little, though she was still trembling. She could see her own face reflected in little in the black pupils of his subaqueous eyes. She still looked the same. She saluted herself. He was only a little taller than she and their eyes were almost level. Remotely, she wished him three inches taller. Or four. She felt the warm breath from his wild beast’s mouth softly, against her cheek. She did not move. Stiff, wooden, and unresponsive, she stood in his arms and watched herself in his eyes. It was a comfort to see herself as she thought she looked.”

Uncle Philip is a terrifying presence, his rages and his rules, oppress the strange little household, where his puppets take precedence. Uncle Philip draws his family into the stories he creates with his puppets, later after weeks of ignoring her presence in the household, he insists that Melanie take a starring role in a particularly disturbing story. Something has to give, and Finn takes drastic action.

The Magic Toyshop has elements of a Gothic fairy-tale, a coming of age tale and quirky romance, it’s compelling, disturbing and charming all at once.

I absolutely loved this book, I hope you can tell (this review is being written much faster than usual – it might be one of those weeks!) and I would love to explore more Angela Carter. show less

I was lucky to discover Angela Carter’s writing at a very young age, not long after I had started to read grown-up books.

I spotted a book named ‘The Magic Toyshop’ on a paperback carousel in the library. What was such a thing doing on the shelves for grown-ups? And why did it have a dark green cover, that looked like a classic, but not the sort of classic I had ever seen before?

I picked the book up, I began to read, and what I read was extraordinary. It was like nothing I had read before and it did things that I didn’t know books could do. After that I read every book by Angela Carter that I could lay my hands on, and I picked up more of those books with dark green covers – Virago Modern Classics – hoping to find more show more intriguing books and more oh so special authors.

And so it was Angela Carter who set me on a path of picking up books bearing unknown titles and unfamiliar author names, hoping to find more magic ….

I had nothing new to read for Angela Carter Week, but I had lots of books that I might revisit, to see what I might find in them with more experience of books and of life behind me. It seemed natural to start again with that first book, to revisit ‘The Magic Toyshop’.

At its heart is a simple story. Melanie is fifteen years-old and she has a lovely life; her parents are happy and successful, she and her siblings are much loved, and they have a beautiful home in the country. But Melanie’s parents are killed in an accident and the three children are sent to live with unknown relations …

But it is clear from the start that this will be a coming of age story like no other.

Melanie’s sexuality is awakening. She is drawn to her mother’s wedding dress, to put it on, to go outside. But she finds herself locked out and she has to shed the dress, bundle it up, climb the apple tree to get back inside.

“She parcelled up the dress and stuck it in the fork of the tree. she could carry it up with her and put it away again in the trunk and no one would know it had been worn if they did not see the blood on the hem, and there was only a little blood. The cat put its head on one side and turned it sequin regard on the parcel; it stretched out its paddy paw and stroked the dress. Its paw was tipped with curved, cunning meat hooks. It had a cruel stroke. There was a ripping sound.”

And when she wakes the next morning she learns that her parents are dead.

Angela Carter painted that scene gloriously, in such rich colours, and there was so much that you could read into it. The whole story was like that; a coming of age story twisted into the most profound, dark, gothic drama.

Melanie found herself in a dilapidated house where her tyrannical uncle ruled over his mute, cowed wife, and her two young brothers. It was a magic toyshop, but it was also a house ruled by fear. Melanie had to learn to live with that, with dirt and poverty, with her feelings for her aunt’s brother, Finn.

Sometimes she was drawn to him – as he was to her – and sometimes she was repulsed by him.

Conflicts and contradictions like that were threaded through the story.

Angela Carter painted vivid pictures in rich colours, picking out the strangest details. Those pictures are utterly compelling, but they are also disturbing, and sometimes repellent.

The most dramatic pictures of all were of her uncle, his life-sized puppets, and the puppet shows he drew first his family and then Melanie into:

“Red plush curtains swung to the floor from a large, box-like construction at the far end of the room. Finn, masked, advanced and tugged a cord. The curtains swished open, gathering in swags at each side of a small stage, arranged as a grotto in a hushed, expectant woodland, with cardboard rocks. Lying face-downwards in a tangle of strings was a puppet five feet high, a sulphide in a fountain of white tulle, fallen flat down as if someone had got tired of her in the middle of playing with her, dropped her and wandered off. She had long, black hair down to the waist of her tight satin bodice.”

In the end something broke. It had to.

Melanie had tried to change things. But there were some things that she didn’t know, that she didn’t understand.

‘The Magic Toyshop’ touches on some difficult subjects, but the images, the ideas, the symbolism, the eccentricity are just so wonderful. It’s untidy though, not a book for those with delicate sensibilities, who like things neat and tidy.

But I can’t pick this book apart. I loved it the first time I read it and I still love it now.

The best way I have to explain its appeal is to confess that I typed ‘Alice’ instead of ‘Melanie’ more than once, because Melanie’s situation seemed so much like Alice’s when she tumbled down the rabbit hole.

It sounds mad, and yet it works …. show less