Product Description

'I know nothing. I am a tabula erasa, a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape. Not a woman, no: both more and less than a real woman. Now I am a being as mythic and monstrous as Mother herself...New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve. New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve. THE PASSION OF NEW EVE is an extraordinary journey into the apocalyptic vision of the author Lorna Sage called 'The boldest of English writers'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14046 in Books
• Published on: 1992-08-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
'If you can imagine Baudelaire, Blake and Kafka getting together to describe America, you are well on the way to Carter's visionary and lurid world' THE TIMES 'Her writing is pyrotechnic' OBSERVER

If we must have futuristic fantasies of feminism's nth degrees, let them come from the darting, lyrical pen of Angela Carter, mistress of the erotic picaresque. And let the hero be as engaging as Evelyn, the carefree Englishman who comes to a New York of rats and tanks and the Harlem Wall and makes a chauvinistic pig of himself with Leilah - the black stripper he impregnates and deserts. "Let the punishment fit the crime," and Evelyn's punishment - after he's abducted by the followers of Mama ("The Grand Emasculator") while driving crosscountry - is to be surgically renamed Eve: "They had turned me into the Playboy centre fold." Being in "the most ludicrous mess in the world," Eve escapes, only to be captured by one-legged, one-eyed, pig-worshipping, paranoid poet Zeno, who rapes her and installs her as his eighth wife. Zeno's great mission is to annihilate the person he believes is responsible for his sterility, faded filmstar Tristessa St. Ange (who happens to have been Evelyn's all-time fantasy sex-object), and, when Zeno's tribe Mansonesquely attacks Tristessa's palace, more sex reversals are revealed, allowing Tristessa and Eve to emerge from the carnage as husband and wife. Tragedy awaits back on the road, however, via the Children's Crusade, and Evelyn/Eve finishes his/her American odyssey adrift and alone and pregnant and knowing that "the vengeance of the sex is love." Carter's surreal parable transcends polemics and skirts silliness - thanks to its urgent, no-nonsense wordings and those tides of authentic feeling pushing up against the lurid tableaux. Yes, if we must have sex-confusion mythmaking and can't have another Orlando, let's by all means have The Passion of New Eve. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
'I know nothing. I am a tabula erasa, a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape. Not a woman, no: both more and less than a real woman. Now I am a being as mythic and monstrous as Mother herself...New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve. New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve. THE PASSION OF NEW EVE is an extraordinary journey into the apocalyptic vision of the author Lorna Sage called 'The boldest of English writers'.

About the Author
One of Britain's most original writers, Angela Carter published her first novel, SHADOW DANCE, in 1965. Carter's death in 1992 'robbed the English literary scene of one of its most vivacious and compelling voices' (INDEPENDENT).

Customer Reviews

surreal feminist fable
"The Passion Of New Eve" is a wild and dangerous ride through aspects of human experience that can be explored only via the over-the-top, surrealistic methods Angela Carter is using.

She is taking a hard look at issues of sexual identity, and by setting her story in a future U.S.A. that is rapidly disintegrating, and descending into all-out civil war, she indicates the often violent and arbitrary way sexual and social roles are created and changed.

The point of the novel seems to be that nature will always defeat the power plays of men, but will offer women strength only - not sympathy. The utterly satisfying section towards the end where Eve is re-born and then expelled from "Eden" underscores this.

A brilliant, deeply challenging book, recommended to readers who like to be broadened.

Infuriating read
This started off very well, with lots of energy and excitement (hence the 2 star rating), even though some of the scenes were quite gut-wrenching. However, I'm afraid I soon got bored with the plot and the characters (I didn't warm to any of them), especially after Evelyn's little operation(!) and I have to admit to skipping the last quarter of the book and not really caring what happened.

Not one I'd recommend to anyone, I think.

Weird and wonderful.
This novel is pure fantasy and the plot very wacky. It tells the story of an Englishman during some very interesting developments in his life including a forced sex change. While this is my least favourite of Angela Carter's books it is still fasinating to read. The events are incredulous but that's half the fun.