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Loading... Heroes and Villains (original 1969; edition 1991)by Angela Carter (Author)
Work InformationHeroes and Villains by Angela Carter (1969)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is the first of Angela Carter's books that I've only given two stars. I was disappointed, especially since it started off so well and immediately drew me in. But the eventual weakening of the main character as well as the weird rape stuff that ran throughout the book didn't sit well with me. I wanted to like this one a lot more than I actually did. ( ) I hate rating these kinds of books. Extremely well-written, but a little too strange and disturbing for me to "enjoy" reading. It's the kind of novel I'd probably enjoy dissecting for a literature class, but for day-to-day reading, not so much. In other words, intellectually, I'd give it a higher rating, but on a personal level, nothing stuck. Set in a dystopian future, where humans now either live among the Professors (men of reason), Barbarians (primitives), or the Out People (mutant aggressives). Marianne, a child of one of the Professors, runs away to join the Barbarians out of boredom but only finds rampant filth, disease, violence and ignorance. She is forced to marry Jewel, a Barbarian who has been educated to a degree, but they hate each other and she constantly thinks of escape. The group is led by a former Professor who acts as sort of a tyrannical medicine man, conducting social experiments for what seems to be only his amusement and desire for power. The characters and their relationships in the novel are highly complex, so much so that I'm still unsure of some of the motivations for the primary characters. During the war, the Professors were safe in the deep shelters, while everyone else had to survive as best they could on the surface. Centuries later, the Professors live in fortified villages with Workers to do the farming and housework. The villages are periodically raided by nomadic barbarian tribes, who take ammunition, cloth, food, and women, some of whom go willingly. And then there are the Out People, mutants who live in holes in the ground, use bows and arrows rather than guns, and attack both of the other groups when they can. Marianne is a Professor's daughter who leaves the safety and boredom of life in a village to live with the tribe who has just attacked her village and finds that it is not like she expected. This was Angela Carter's fourth novel and I hadn’t even heard of it before finding it at a BookCrossing meet-up. It was very interesting but tailed off at the end. no reviews | add a review
Is abridged inHas as a student's study guide
With a new Introduction by Robert Coover 'An unashamed fantasist, a fabulist of daemonic energy' The Times Sharp-eyed Marianne lives in a white tower made of steel and concrete with her father and the other Professors. Outside, where the land is thickly wooded and wild beasts roam, live the Barbarians, who raid and pillage in order to survive. Marianne is strictly forbidden to leave her civilized world but, fascinated by these savage outsiders, decides to escape. There, beyond the wire fences, she will discover a decaying paradise, encounter the tattooed Barbarian boy Jewel and go beyond the darkest limits of her imagination. Playful, sensuous, violent and gripping, Heroes and Villains is an ambiguous and deliriously rich blend of post-apocalyptic fiction, gothic fantasy, literary allusion and twisted romance. 'Angela Carter is a genius' Victoria Glendinning No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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