Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories [Mass Market Paperback]

Angela Carter (Author), Salman Rushdie (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1997

From reflections on jazz and Japan through vigorous refashionings of classic fairy tales to stunning snapshots of modern life in all its tawdry glory, Burning Your Boats charts the evolution of Angela Carter's marvelous magic vision in a volume that assembles her considerable legacy of short fiction, including early and previously unpublished stories.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Baudelaire, Poe, Dream-Shakespeare, Hollywood, panto, fairy tale: [Angela] Carter wears her influences openly, for she is their deconstructionist, their saboteur." So writes Salman Rushdie in his introduction to this essential dark fantasy collection, the complete stories (1962-1993) of a master of perfervid prose, dark eroticism, northern Gothic exuberance (think Isak Dinesen), and Grand Guignol imagery. (You may be familiar with Neil Jordan's movie The Company of Wolves, based on one of Carter's tales.) As the New York Times writes, "There is an archaic cruel streak in many of these stories. Violence is always a possibility; beauty and courage and passion may prevail, but the weak and the timid go to the wall. In this, Angela Carter is true to the material that inspired her. After all, one reason the old fairy tales have survived for hundreds of years is that they do not try to disguise what the world is really like." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The late Angela Carter, better known as a novelist (Wise Children), wrote stories throughout her all-too-brief career, and they are all here, handsomely and perceptively introduced by Salman Rushdie, who was an old friend. These are not at all conventional stories that glimpse moments in contemporary life.They are tales, legends, variations on mythic themes, sparked by writing of great vitality, color and inventiveness, and a deeply macabre imagination. Carter's favorite themes mingle love and death. She cherishes dark forests, winter sunsets, wolves and werewolves, bloody murder, hunters, the cruel, rich husbands of maidens condemned to death. But she also has a ribald, extremely contemporary sense of humor that keeps glancing through the dark mists. Thus John Ford's Jacobean melodrama 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore resurfaces as the script for a movie directed by a 20th-century namesake; a Ph.D. candidate meets his subject's widow, someone very much like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard; and Britain's immortal pantomime characters get a hilarious going-over for their psychosexual significance. There are variations on Lizzie Borden, on the childhood of Edgar Allan Poe and several on Little Red Riding Hood, who gets the better of the Big Bad Wolf in at least two of them (Carter was an ardent but scarcely PC feminist). This is not a collection to be read at a sitting; the stories' jolting intensity makes them indigestible in large doses. But for readers who respond to an antic fancy dressed in highly charged prose, they are a generous treat.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140255281
• ISBN-13: 978-0140255287
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Angela Carter (1940-1992) was the author of many novels, collections of short stories, plays, and books for children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Buyer Beware, December 19, 2001

By 

E. L. hobbs "hv1brst" (elk grove, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

Be aware that Carter's excellent story of Lizzie Bordenis edited in this editon. The fabulou8s dinner scene, described in great detail in other editons of this story has been deleted from this version. E. Hobbs

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars editing can go too far, May 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

Unfortunately the story of Lizzie Borden in this editon has been edited mercilessly, a fact my English proffessor only became aware of when she was teaching from a different editon--reccommend that one try to find collection in original form--Carter is too good to be edited so thoughtlessly.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Magic, October 2, 2003

By 

Jennifer "Editor, EXPLETIVE DELETED" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

In 'Notes From the Front Line', Carter said that she was not in the remythologizing business but in the demythologizing business. Anna Katsavos asked Angela Carter what she meant by that. Angela said, 'Well, I'm basically trying to find out what certain configurations of imagery in our society, in our culture, really stand for, what they mean, underneath the kind of semireligious coating that makes people not particularly want to interfere with them.'

Simply stated, Angela Carter has taken icons and myths we were all raised with and given them back to us in a form we know and trust. In stories. Her stories are adult fairy tales; lush, penetrating, uninhibited and dark.

An introduction by Salman Rushdie sets the perfect tone for the reading ahead. It is the closest to gushing the man has ever come. He says, these stories are also a treasure , to savour and to hoard. They begin with her early works, from 1962-6. The Man Who Loved the Double Bass tells the story of a musician in madly love with his instrument. Could he live without her? In the section called Fireworks; Nine Profane Pieces from 1974, Carters work begins an ethereal exploration on of the psyche in achingly beautiful prose. Her ability to write fantastical tableaus is showcased. In The Executioners Daughter, an executioner is told to execute his only son. The setting, itself, becomes a character. In Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest, a brother and sister are nudged into exploring the a dark forest and its hidden fruit tree. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is next, featuring writings from 1979. These are fairy tales retold for adults and contains some of the most stunning and psychological erotic written. Black Venus contains writing from 1985 and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, work from 1993. Uncollected Stories contains work from 1970-81, featuring The Scarlet House, about a woman trapped in a house by a master of Chaos.

These short stories are profane, wise, surreal, unrepentant and brilliant. The Tiger's Bride alone is worth the price of admission in to this magical world.