Review | The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

by Angela Carter

My Rating: 

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

I wasn't introduced to Angela Carter in the best way. I was pretty bright at school and I loved English Literature, but at 17 and 18 I wasn't as sophisticated as many other people my age out there were - writers like Angela Carter and Jane Austen baffled me rather than amazed me. I just didn't 'get' them, and because I didn't get them I translated that confusion into contempt and decided I didn't like them.

I was first introduced to Angela Carter in sixth form when we had to read Wise Children and it wasn't a good way for me to be introduced to her as a writer. Some of the students loved it, but I wasn't a fan of bizarre fiction then and that novel was way too weird for my tastes. It still is, to be honest. Foolishly, however, I let that novel taint my view of Carter's other work, so when I was introduced to The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories I decided I didn't like it before I'd even read it.

This is basically a very long-winded way of me saying that I finally decided to give Carter another chance - I've grown as a reader and my tastes are very different to what they were at 18 - and this time around, when I read The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, I bloody loved it. I finally 'got' her.

I often see this collection referred to as a collection of retellings, but I'm not sure if I'd describe them that way. Are these the original fairy tales? No, but to me they feel more like updated versions of the originals than complete retellings. After all, there are so many different versions of fairy tales all around the world; the Grimm Brothers collected their tales, they didn't write them themselves. I mention this because, to me, The Bloody Chamber is always what I think of when I think of the Bluebeard tale - even when I read this collection before and didn't really care for it that story stuck in my head, and I now know it, and love it, far better than any other version.

The first three stories in this collection were definitely my favourite, but there weren't any that I disliked. Even the stories that I still found just plain weird were a joy to read because the way Carter uses language is such a treat; after The Bloody Chamber are two versions of Beauty and the Beast back-to-back, my other two favourite stories in the collection, and even though they were the same story at their core I wasn't bored reading them so close together. In fact those two stories in particular are testament to Carter's talent as a writer; that she can tell the same story in two such different ways, without repeating herself, shows true skill.

This collection is strange and vulgar and sometimes enigmatic, but I had so much fun reading it and it's definitely a book I'm going to re-read in future as I think I'm going to take something new from it each time. I'm so glad I gave Carter (and myself) a second chance.

Welcome to Jessticulates!

For several years now you'll have known me as Jess @ Curiouser and Curiouser, over at themoormaiden.blogspot.co.uk, but I've been thinking of changing that for a while now and, today, I decided to just go ahead and do it!

My content will be exactly the same, I'm still a nerdy book blogger who should be reading more than she is, I just wanted to give my blog a new name, something a little more original to me and something that meant my blog title and my blog URL are the same. That's been bugging me for a while, I can tell you that much.

Anyway, this is just a head's up to let you know that I didn't spontaneously delete my blog, I just spontaneously renamed it instead.

Speak to you all soon!

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Top Ten Tuesday | Books I Struggled to Finish

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Ten Books I Struggled to Get Into But Ended Up Loving or Ten Books That Were A Chore To Get Through or Ten Books I've Most Recently Put Down', so I decided to talk about some of the books I struggled to get through. Some of them I ended up enjoying, some of them I really didn't, and the first five are all books I had to read for school/university.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare: I had to read this at school and at university and I can't stand it. I know Hamlet's a masterpiece, I know it's many people's favourite Shakespeare play, but I loathe it; Hamlet's so whiny and useless and I can't believe I kept having to study it over and over again.

Regeneration by Pat Barker: I didn't completely hate this novel, set during the First World War, but I was 17 when I read it and I definitely found it pretty dull. Having said that, I do remember quite a lot about it so maybe it had more of an impact on me than I realise.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins: I made myself read this over the summer before my third year of university, knowing I would be studying it for my module in Victorian Popular Fiction, and I'm really glad I forced myself through it; not only was I well prepared to talk about it for my classes, but it also ended up becoming one of my favourite classics.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: I know this book is beloved by a lot of people, and I completely understand why, but I had to read it during sixth form and I hated it. All of the characters are pretty awful and I just didn't like it.

Persuasion by Jane Austen: This is one of the classics I had to read for school that I'd like to revisit, because it's thanks to this book that, at 18, I convinced myself I hated everything Austen. The older I get the more I understand Austen and I'd like to try reading this again because, as beloved as Pride and Prejudice is, a lot of people consider this novel to be her true masterpiece.

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler: This is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew in the Hogarth Shakespeare series and I was really excited for it. I ended up hating it, but I forced my way through it because it's fairly short. Check out my review here.

Requiem by Lauren Oliver: I really, really liked Delirium, the first book in this series, but both Pandemonium and Requiem were such disappointments for me and Requiem in particular I really had to force myself through, only to be given the most disappointing ending I've ever come across in a series. I could see what Oliver was trying to do, but I think she should have wrapped the story up just a little more.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Undoubtedly this is a beautiful book, but I didn't love this one as much as I thought I would because it took me so long to get through it. Morgenstern's writing and her descriptions were beautiful, but I found Celia and Marco's relationship a bit too dull to really be invested in and, looking back, I don't think I ever really cared how the book was going to end.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik: I had a similar problem with this novel, I loved the ideas behind it but something about Novik's writing meant I didn't completely get on with it and it ended up taking me a while to finish it. I enjoyed it, but when I put it down I didn't feel compelled to pick it back up. Check out my review here.

Diving Belles by Lucy Wood: Unfortunately this one is probably my most disappointing read of this year because I so wanted to love it, but I realised fairly early on it wasn't what I was hoping it would be and that meant that, like Uprooted, I just didn't feel compelled to pick it up and read it and I ended up having to force my way through the end just to cross it off my TBR. Check out my review here if you want to know more about why I wasn't a big fan!

Which books made your list this week?

Review | A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan

A Portable Shelter

by Kirsty Logan

My Rating:

In their tiny, sea-beaten cottage on the north coast of Scotland, Liska and Ruth await the birth of their first child.

Each passes the time by telling the baby stories, trying to pass on the lessons they’ve learned: tales of circuses and stargazing, selkie fishermen and domestic werewolves, child-eating witches and broken-toothed dragons.

But they must keep their storytelling a secret from one another, as they’ve agreed to only ever tell the plain truth. So to cloak their tales, Ruth tells her stories when Liska is at work, to a background of shrieking seabirds; Liska tells hers when Ruth is asleep, with the lighthouse sweeping its steady beam through the window.

My appreciation and yearning for short story collections has been growing and growing over recent years, and after sadly being disappointed by Lucy Wood's Diving Belles earlier this year, a collection centered around Cornish folklore, I had hopes that A Portable Shelter, a collection this time centered around Scottish folklore, would satisfy my short story needs. Thankfully, it did!

As with all short story collections, there were some stories I liked a lot more than others, though there weren't any I disliked, but what I loved about this collection was how the stories were all stories within one over-arching story of two women, Liska and Ruth, who are expecting their first child and are telling the unborn baby stories that seem to have some kind of basis in reality as they feature people the women know or know of through other people. It's such a clever way to help one story flow into the next, and it really pulled me through the book from story to story.

There are tales of selkies, bears, dragons and people, each one playing with the blurred line between the mundane and the magical, how our lives are influenced by our stories and our stories are influenced by our lives. While the stories are true to an extent, I really enjoyed that we couldn't be sure how true they are - it was never clear if selkies and dragons actually exist in Ruth and Liska's Scotland or if they're metaphors for something else and I loved being able to decide that for myself.

Logan's writing is lyrical and melancholic, yet hopeful. Some of the stories were heart-wrenchingly sad, but many more of them left me with the feeling that things can, and do, get better - not necessarily straight away, in fact never, really, straight away, but eventually they do, and eventually is enough. I'm really looking forward to reading more of Logan's work, particularly her debut collection, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales.

If you're a fan of fairy tales and folklore, or you're simply in the mood for a good short story collection, I definitely recommend picking this one up!

Review | The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

My Rating: 

Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men.

But as Monty embarks on his grand tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.

Still it isn’t in Monty’s nature to give up. Even with his younger sister, Felicity, in tow, he vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt that spans across Europe, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

This is one of those books that somehow passed me by until about a month before it was due to be published, and once I was aware of it I saw it everywhere. I saw so many rave reviews from readers who'd managed to get hold of a review copy that I knew I had to have it and, once I had it, I had so much fun reading it.

This easily could have been a frustrating, infuriating book. It takes a very good author to write a character who grows significantly as a person throughout a story, and boy does Lee do that well with Monty. Monty is privileged in many ways; he's white, male and wealthy and has been able to get away with his reckless behaviour because he's white, male and wealthy. He's been privileged since birth and, as such, he doesn't comprehend how life isn't as easy for his sister, Felicity, and his mixed race best friend, Percy.

Could it be frustrating to be reading a story from the point of view of someone who's had so much handed to him on a plate and taken it for granted? Yes, but Lee writes Monty so well that he is a sympathetic character. What's important about Monty's story is that he does grow as a person, at a natural pace, and we can see how he changes and why he changes which, as a reader, is very rewarding. When all Monty has known is the privilege he was born with we can't punish him for that privilege, instead he has to learn for himself to be aware of that privilege, and it was so refreshing to follow a protagonist in historical fiction who isn't 'ahead of their time'. So often in historical fiction protagonists feel like 21st century people in costume because authors don't want their characters to be so unrelatable that they're unlikeable, but Lee isn't afraid to make Monty a product of his time and his upbringing and still, ultimately, a good person, and I love this book because of it.

I was also a huge fan of the romance. It can be difficult to write a relationship that goes from friendship to romance well, but the chemistry between Monty and Percy is delicious and believable and I couldn't stop grinning whenever the two of them were together. Percy might well be my favourite character in the novel, I adored him.

Lee gets bonus points from me, too, for not shying away from the racism and homophobia that was rampant in the 18th century; Monty himself is completely aware that, were his sexuality known by the wrong people, he could be executed for sodomy, but that doesn't stop him from pursuing relationships with other men because that's part of who he is. Poor Percy, on the other hand, faces discrimination from all angles being both mixed race and non-heterosexual, but Lee still writes him as a fleshed-out young man who just so happens to be these things and not a metaphoric victim.

The only small issue I had with this novel was the fantastical element which, to me, seemed to pop up out of nowhere and jarred me a little. It wasn't bad by any means, and it certainly didn't spoil what is a brilliant book, but I wasn't expecting it and I'm not sure it needed to be there. It's difficult to discuss without spoilers but the idea of a magical (for lack of a better word) panacea certainly gave the plot some direction, I just wasn't expecting this supernatural cure-all to be real within the story. If you've read it then hopefully you'll know what I mean, because I'm fairly sure I'm not making any sense. The review skills are strong with this one.

All in all this was a fun, entertaining and fast-paced read that also packed an emotional punch, fantastic character development and a whole lot of historical context. I really enjoyed the experience of reading it and I'm eagerly anticipating The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy!

Hiatus

I disappeared for a couple of weeks there. Oops.

Hello! So if you saw my last post you'll know I went to Disneyland Paris last month and I had an amazing time. 

At least I had an amazing time the first two days I was there, the last two days I was there I was ill. I continued to get worse once I was back in the UK until I ended up spending the night in hospital because, lucky me, I got quinsy again.

It's just typical that I fell ill while on holiday, I'd been looking forward to going all year, but never mind! Worse things have happened and I'm much better now.

Sadly, though, being ill and trying to catch up at work at the busiest time of year has meant I didn't complete the Camp NaNoWriMo project I was hoping to finish - which is particularly frustrating because I was making such good progress at the start of July! - and I also haven't read anything in way too long and I'm just feeling a bit wrung out and not in the mood to blog. So instead of worrying about not populating my blog, I'm going to go ahead and take a step back and come back in September refreshed and (hopefully) ready to write a ton of new content. I miss the book blogging world, I just haven't been reading enough to join in properly.

I may pop up later this month if Top Ten Tuesday takes my fancy, but if not I'll see you all in September!