Customer Reviews

Heroes and Villains

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read several Angela Carter novels--all of them great, but "Heroes and Villains" disappointed. After the glorious reading offered by "The Magic Toyshop" and "Several Perceptions," I had high expectations for "Heroes and Villains" which it sadly did not meet. A decent novel altogether but it lacks Carter's magical prose and she fails to create a convincing post-apocalyptic world. Furthermore, Marianne and Jewel are not very interesting characters. It is an ambitious story clearly influenced by the guru movement of the 1960's, and although its message is still pertinent, the novel itself feels more like an artifact of the flower power generation. Instead, I would recommend "The Magic Toyshop," "Several Perceptions," "Nights at the Circus" and "The Bloody Chamber" for anyone deeply interested in Angela Carter.

An astonishing little book describing the throes of a woman caught up in a hopeless post-apocalyptic world. Beautifully written, in a dark, haunting, extistential style.

Reading this book is like being covered with dead leaves and undergoing a personal process of transformation into the most potently fertile mulch, if this can be done as poetry and with vitality and supernatural grace.

beautiful, haunting, thought provoking..