In the early 20th century, a young Parisian piano player marries a rich older Marquis, and is swept off on a journey back to his ancestral castle. Titular story “The Bloody Chamber” is the longest of the collection, based on the fairy tale “Bluebeard”. You might see Sleeping Beauty in “The Lady Of The House Of Love”, and certainly “The Snow Child” - the shortest of the stories - seems to have an obvious comparison. If you’ve seen the Disney adaptation of “Beauty And The Beast”, you might see a shadow of the Beast in Carter’s Mr Lyon. They’re also striking, rich and inventive. And, in my opinion, they’re some of the most isolating, uncanny, baffling short stories I’ve read.
Instead, they’re short stories in their own right. The foreword insists these are not re-tellings or - heaven forbid - adult versions. “The Bloody Chamber” is an anthology containing ten short stories, all inspired by famous fairy tales. So, I decided that it’d been a couple of years, and I should give it another read, and see if my opinions had changed at all.
And for some reason, “The Bloody Chamber” came to mind. It’s based, in part, on “The Odyssey”, amongst other Greek myths, and got me thinking about other “re-tellings” of famous stories I’ve read in the past (I’m a bit of an aficionado). Recently, I read Madeline Miller’s novel “Circe”, another book that’s been sitting on my “to read” list since Christmas. I did however, immediately go out and pick up more of Carter’s books, because I found something incredibly compelling about her writing. Personally, it could be that I just didn’t “get” them. Possibly the fact that they’re somewhat shocking, possibly the sometimes flowery and over-the-top language. I still don’t really know what it was about the stories. If the foreword of the edition I own is anything to go by, that’s a fairly common reaction. The first time I read it was during a university course on fairy tales, and I absolutely hated it. This is actually the second time I’ve read Angela Carter’s polarising short story collection, “The Bloody Chamber”. Sign up to our Weekly newsletter Subscribe to our magazine for more great content
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