Genre: , Magical Realism, short stories
Key Stage: KS5+ contains mature often unsettling content including scenes of a graphic nature.
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (1979)
Reviewer: Amina, Year 12
This book explores themes based upon fairytales and folktales, taking your traditional fairytales and adding a little twist to them. Carter herself said that her goal with this book was to “extract the latent content from the traditional stories” and rewrite them in a more intriguing and engaging way, exploring her feminist view. This book is made up of many short stories, all different from each other yet ever so interesting.
My favourite story of this book would either be ‘The Bloody Chamber’ or ‘ The courtship of Mr Lyon.’ Both completely different stories, as one is based upon sexuality, violence and power while the other is based upon the themes of love and heroism. Here, it is evident of the many topics that Angela explores, and each having a meaningful impact. What I liked about this book was being able to read and understand the book, but also reading stories with different plots I didn’t expect. However, some stories such as The Bloody Chamber did have times where it was disturbing to read. Overall, I would really recommend this book!