Product Description

'The scar drew her whole face sideways and even in profile, with the hideous thing turned away, her face was horribly lop- sided, skin, features and all, dragged away from the bone. She was a beautiful girl, a white and golden girl, like moonlight on daisies, a month ago.' And yet the men still hover around her, more out of curiosity than lust, and none more so than the wildly seductive, dangerous funny man, Honeybuzzard; lithe as a stick of liquorice, he is the demonic puppet master at the swirling centre of the tale. 'In a modern day horror story gleaming with perfect 1960's detail, she performs a double act, conjuring up just the right amount of unease and perversion beneath the idiosyncratic business of relatively ordinary lives' THE TIMES

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #262694 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
'Angela Carter's writing is pyrothechnic - fuelled with ideas, packed with images and spangling the night with her starry language. She brings the gift of wonder' OBSERVER 'The boldest of English writers' Lorna Sage 'A great writer ... A real one-off' SALMAN RUSHDIE

About the Author
Angela Carter was born in 1940. One of Britain's most original and disturbing writers, she died in 1992.

Customer Reviews

Living in the "Wasteland"
In this first novel Carter examines the concept of grotesques, People who live in the shadows and twilight zone of their own "Wasteland" questioning their own reality. Living amongst the refuge and rubbish of society these nocturnal creatures are both repulsive yet familiar. The main character "Honeybuzzard" is a modern day "Jekyll and Hyde" cruel and capricious, but instantly recognisable in today's hedonistic society, living for the moment and pursuing his desire at any cost. A character for whom seeing is a complex business hence the permanent dark glasses. There are many Freudian allusions; Honeybuzzard and his distorted vision, Emily represented as a super ego, and Morris as the suffering artist failing to escape from ambiguity. These dark characters attract no empathy from the reader, and death is seen as the ultimate act of the artist.

A Surprisingly realist narrative from the queen of post-modernism. When read as part of a continuum of Carter's work it is interesting to see the development from realist narrative to magic-realist in later texts.

Seedy male underworld story that reads like a dream
This book provides an interesting description of blokiness gone terribly wrong, in an exciting story based in a seedy world of antique shops and smoky pubs. The author writes brilliantly about men and in particular through her narrator, Morris, and his weak, immoral behaviour, generally influenced by his friend and antihero Honey. I am writing this review after reading about a 100 pages in less than two hours, and so I have to say that the book reads like a dream. There are amazing flurries of metaphors and alliterations, where the author steered just the right side of pretentiousness. There is also a nice level of humour as the reader delights guiltily in Honey's awfulness as well as some erudite cultural references.

Shadow Dance
Gorgeous writing and macabre characters proliferate in this novel which is admittedly not to everyone's taste. By Carter using archetypes of fiction to create more fiction, the events and characters come to life vividly in the readers mind. They feel real, these are the people we see from day to day, people we might be wary of. And, as it turns out in most stories these people are the stuff from which our nightmares are created. Recommended.