Book Review - The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Synopsis:  From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss-in-Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires, werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.

First Line:  "I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother's apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage."

Random Quote:  "For all cats have this particularity, each and every one, from the meanest alley sneaker to the proudest, whitest she that ever graced a pontiff's pillow - we have our smiles, as it were, painted on.  Those small, cool, quiet Mona Lisa smiles that smile we must, no matter whether it's been fun or it's been not."

Review:  A feminist retelling of familiar fairy tales - I liked this, but I didn't love it and it feels unnecessary somehow.  Anyone who has read the unsanitized versions of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen and even Andrew Lang's color-coded fairy tale books knows that fairy tales aren't pretty.  They occur in dark and glorious places filled with danger and people who mean you no good.

Little Red Riding Hoods from The Path

This collection of stories also suffers from being essentially the same story, told and re-told, which might work as a literary device for a collection and an overarching metaphor for the author's view on the endangered woman in our stories, but doesn't work for me within this context.

This also suffers in comparison to The Path, an amazing adventure game by Tale of Tales that draws from various version of Little Red Riding Hood and puts you in the loosely drawn center of danger.  The game is far from linear, functions less as a video game and more as a linked series of impressions and expertly uses its form to elucidate the story.  Yes, read this, but play that to learn something more about storytelling and fairy tales.

Reading Challenges:  Once Upon a Time IV, 2010 100+ Reading Challenge