Product Description

Centre stage in Angela Carter's unruly tale of the Flower Power Generation is Joseph - a decadent, disorientated rebel without a cause. A self-styled nihilist whose girlfriend has abandoned him, Joseph has decided to give up existing. But his concerned friends and neighbours have other plans. In an effort to join in the spirit of protest which motivates his contemporaries, Joseph frees a badger from the local zoo; sends a turd airmail to the President of the United States; falls in love with the mother of his best friend; and, accompanied by the strains of an old man's violin, celebrates Christmas Eve in a bewildering state of sexual discovery. But has he found the Meaning of Life?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171534 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 148 pages

Review
'A picture of the Swinging Sixties without the romantic gloss of middle-aged memories' SUNDAY TIMES 'Vintage Carter' The Times

Angela Carter (The Magic Toyshop and The Honcybuzzard) is a young writer with a great deal of equipment however she chooses to apply it - in an isolating fashion on isolated misfits. Squirmingly one admires her remarkable descriptions of tatty interiors and of the scummy characters who tenant her books usually at the expense of any story. In this case primarily, a young man Joseph who has rejected an education, rejected the world actually (with sporadic political protest peppering the pages) to become a hospital orderly. . ."he had free choice on the self-service counter and voluntarily selected shit, old men dying, pus. . ." under a "gangrene sky." Left by his girl, he then elects to commit suicide and fails. Joseph is seen with several as bedraggled characters: Miss Blossom downstairs, with her crimped hair and crippled leg; a wild beatnik, Kay; the billowing Mrs. Boulder who suffuses him with her slackening charms. Only the badger at the zoo seems to symbolize to Joseph his own entrapment. . . . Miss Carter's perceptions are rather limited; instead she has provided an endless collage of images, all irradiated by her dynamic graphic gift and perhaps most comfortably viewed at a distance. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
One of Britain's most original writers, Angela Carter published her first novel, SHADOW DANCE, in 1965. THE MAGIC TOYSHOP won the 1969 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and SEVERAL PERCEPTIONS the 1968 Somerset Maugham Prize. Carter's death in 1992 'robbed the English literary scene of one of its most vivacious and compelling voices' (INDEPENDENT).