The Bloody Chamber

Tegen al mijn verwachtingen in viel dit boek mij bijzonder tegen.

Ik kon het vooral niet vinden met de schrijfstijl, die ik lastig, ingewikkeld en verwarrend vond.
Kwam er nog bij dat, ondanks het feit dat het hier om sprookjes met een twist ging, de verhalen me eigenlijk weinig konden boeien. Hierdoor betrapte ik mezelf meermaals dat ik eigenlijk geen moeite meer deed om de omfloerste zinnen te ontcijferen en mijn ogen gewoon door gleden tot ik een leesteken tegen kwam. Sjah...jammer.

A very strong collection! Angela Carter writes so beautifully and I loved the visceral nature of her storytelling. I think listening to this on audiobook however dampened my reading experience and made it harder for me to lose myself in the individual stories. I think I will re read this collection in a physical format at some stage as I think I will really enjoy it when I have the time to devour it in one sitting. Overall though I though this was a fascinating and well crafted short story collection that intertwines themes of femininity, hunger, desire and lust and turns common fairy tales on their heads!

First story fine then gone virginal, vulgar and sexual.

I think the idea is that despite women being put in terrible situations of roles they can be liberated here by shamelessly getting the bad male roles, acting just as bad as them and this probably stems from the author's fascination with Sade (These are assumptions by me tho). I don't think that's the best of ideas (Not all of the stories explore this idea).

These stories are super descriptive and have little plot which I am not used to, a couple went over my head and had to go back a bit. Disgustingly beautiful, but there are parts which are just disgusting. The sentences were so long and some techniques I would expect in poetry were present that I thought this might be considered as verse, but it is not. This tells me I need to read poetry for real, I have read way too little and maybe find more of this descriptive prose.

I am actually not familiar with fairy tales at all which is odd, but yeah maybe I should read the originals sometime! Like I read/heard/watched them as a child, and I somewhat know the outlines, but I don't know them that well.

‰ЫПAt night, those huge, inconsolable, rapacious eyes of his are eaten up by swollen, gleaming pupils. His eyes see only appetite. These eyes open to devour the world in which he sees, nowhere, a reflection of himself; he passed through the mirror and now, henceforward, lives as if upon the other side of things.‰Ыќ ... ‰ЫПAs she continued her ministrations, this glass, with infinite slowness, yielded to the reflexive strength of its own material construction. Little by little, there appeared within it, like the image on photographic paper that emerges, first, a formless web of tracery, the prey caught in its own fishing net, then in firmer yet still shadowed outline until at last as vivid as real life itself, as if brought into being by her soft, moist, gentle tongue, finally, the face of the Duke.‰Ыќ