Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1118212 in Books
• Published on: 1994-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

A lush, dark, post-apocalyptic fantasy
Carter writes vicious, poisoned romance that hangs around in your head for a long time after reading it, due to her conscious and playful use of archetypes: hence the title. Here the archetypal vicious virgin is Marianne, a professor's daughter brought up in an ordered village community, who farm neat pockets of land surrounded by riotous jungle and dead cities. The community is composed of Professors, Workers and Soldiers, who guard the village against the Barbarians outside: lawless scavenger gypsies, who live by raiding. When Marianne is six she sees her brother killed by a Barbarian boy: it haunts her for years. She grows up strange, apart, unfriendly, much given to walking in the ruins by herself. When she is sixteen her father is killed by her nurse in a mad fit. Shortly after the village is raided by Barbarians. When one of them, Jewel, is left behind she helps him to escape and is carried off by him to a ruined mansion in the jungle, where his tribe live.

Far from being the creatures of her nightmares, the tribe are a disease-ridden, primitive and pitiful bunch. Although Jewel himself is nominal leader, it is more or less run by two refugees from the civilised world, the mad Dr Donally and Jewel's nurse Mrs Green. Donally is an ex-Professor who is amusing himself by creating rituals for the tribe - their elaborate hair and warpaint, a weird religion based on snake worship - but does nothing to educate them or improve their lot: his tattoos kill, his herbal potions poison. The work of guarding and hunting and raiding is done by Jewel and his six brothers. Donally has educated Jewel a little and considers him his work of art, figuratively and literally: he has tattooed a painting of Adam and Eve in the Garden on his back. He is making Jewel into the perfect Barbarian nightmare, the beautiful prince of villains, but he has never taught him to read, or think for himself, so that he, Donally, can continue to run things.

When Marianne arrives, from his own background, with equal intellect, he realises she is a match for him and incorporates her into the tribe by forcing her to marry Jewel, who rapes her. Furious, she realises what Donally is up to, but knows there is nothing she can do for the present, and goes along with the wedding. However, she has underestimated the strength of archetypes, and the sexual effect that the beautiful young man will inevitably have on a repressed virgin. Donally is extremely amused by her struggles against this effect: but when she recognises Jewel as the boy who killed her brother, the two of them discover a bond between them which eventually becomes stronger than Donally's hold over them, and when Marianne discovers she is pregnant they drive him out of the tribe. When Jewel is later killed, Marianne realises that she, now, will be responsible for the new order.

Anyone who likes dark twisted romance will love this book. It's not simple - Carter is an academic and there's a metafictive element in all of her books - but it's weirdly spellbinding, and stands years of re-reading whenever you're in the mood for it..

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Gripping post-apocalyptic novel
Usually the genre of the post-nuclear holocaust novel doesn't appeal, but this novel is one of the best written on the subject.
With the backdrop of a changed world, there are still remnants of the structure of our civilisation that are struggling to survive - society has been divided into groups, the two largest being the Professors and the Barbarians. Marianne moves from one group to the other, allowing a full description of this new society - but it is the strong characters that really make this novel a cut above the others. The amazing descriptions of the landscape, clothing and jewellery capture the imagination and the intelligent comment on our modern society makes this a fascinating read.

clever, sexy and dark
I first read this in the mid 1980s and it left an indelible impression on my mind, especially Jewel, who became ever after an archetype of whimsical masculine beauty and intrigue. I have come back to this novel through later, slightly derivative fiction, especially Jim Younger's High John the Conqueror, and find it as fresh and as audacious as ever. The story is a short, packed with singular characterisation, Mrs Green, the Doctor, the idiot boy, and set deep within a post holocaust landsacpe of ruins, verdant greens, a land of the Professors (from `the deep shelters') the splendid if regressive barbarians, and the Out people. Each character is part of a rich genre, a clever intellectual read about social order, myth and still after all these years, subversively feminist: Marianne and Jewel's dialogue are perfectly done, only Carter could in effect convey the wit without making it seem fake or patronising:
`I'll leave you' she said furiously, `as soon as the baby is born!'
`You'll never' said Jewel contemptuously, `you're creaming for me now, this very minute.' He thrust his hand between her legs but she said
`That doesn't mean I won't leave you'
`Nor does it.' he agreed `but it suggests you might find going more difficult than coming' (p 126). Moving and rather haunting, it is both very much of its time (1969-70) but quite timeless in its appeal. Carter, her joy of sex, and the sheer imaginative power of her prose, is much missed.