Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

Having enjoyed the novels of Angela Carter, I decided to give her short stories a try. Written in the same poetic style, these stories require reading very slowly in order to enoy the language. The dense sybolism requires that you think about each story for a while before proceeding to the next. In fact I would recommend reading only a few at sitting. Like any author of short stories, Carter wrote a few that failed to draw me in. But these failures only point to the stengths of those that did.

These stories are extremely engrossing. Carter puts her unique spin on familiar fairy tales, while creating a few new ones of her own. These aren't your grandmother's fairy tales. Carter's work is filled with contradictions and mutations of beauty, profanity, humor, and the macabre, whether told richly as in "The Loves of Lady Purple", or more subtly as in "The Fall River Axe Murders". These dark, beautiful, magical stories are more akin to what fairy tales were originally like before they got all cleaned up.

Carter's stories are so beautifully-written I find myself wanting to read them aloud. If only five or so collections of short stories existed in my library, I would make sure "Burning Your Boats" is among them. Carter was fantastic at bringing sexual tension and the macabre to the surface of fairy tales and folklore. Overall, this book is a fine investment of both time and money.

Women who turn INTO wolves among other nightmarish images.Adult tales to be savored slowly, preferably aloud, in front of a fireon a dark and stromy night. These stories are word-dense; keep a dictionary close by. Things are not what they may seem on first reading, or even the second. Not to be missed!