Customer Reviews

The Magic Toyshop

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been knocked out by every Angela Carter book I've read, but for some reason this early effort is my favorite. It doesn't contain her most gorgeously drunken prose (I think that honor goes to "Wise Children") or showcase her unique storytelling gifts as well as her short fiction does, but it's a powerhouse all the same.

There are some great scenes here: the sensuality of the girl's private dream world at the beginning of the novel, the crushing finality when she and her brother arrive at their uncle's house and she realizes what a grim turn her life has taken, the descriptions of her brother, their monstrous uncle, his long-suffering wife and hapless brothers-in-law, the bizarre puppets her uncle creates.... This is highly imaginative stuff, and it doesn't let up for a minute.

"Nights at the Circus" and "Wise Children" are both very funny novels, and even their darkest episodes can't diminish the humor. "The Magic Toyshop" sinks into darkness very early on and remains there for most of the novel. But Melanie is such an engaging and sympathetic character that you never once give up hope that somehow, she'll find some kind of escape from the dismal world into which she's thrown.

If you've never read Angela Carter, this is a good place to start. It's a bit more traditional than many of her other novels, but it has plenty of bite and a set of characters you'll never forget.

It seems I can't go back to this book without recalling the conditions in which I read it - I had just entered a four weeks-schooling period (an obligatory choice for military service in my country), which took place in a remote manor house in the countryside, it was full summer and very hot, and I shared a tiny room with a guy who never spoke a word. I was extremely bored and horrified at the thought that this would be my life for a month onward. At nights I read this book about a girl who also enters a world she doesn't find very pleasing, and even though I'm not suggesting that I experienced nearly that amount of misery, I truly could identify with her. I felt like being locked in a cage, but this book liberated me in a way.

Which isn't to say it is a very optimistic or light-hearted work. Not in any sense. But it's written with emotion and humour, the author's voice is very sympathetic. It makes you think about life. So what, we're all prisoners, there's no way out, just keep on doing what you do, but it's good to remember once in a while that dreams never hurt.

In 1991 I saw the film version of this book on A&E and was immediately hooked. Carter wrote the screenplay, and while the film had many elements of magical realism not in the book, it was an almost perfect adaptation. I wish I could see it again! After searching in vain for a copy of the book in the US, I finally found one in a small bookstore in Sydney, Australia in '92, and have been reading it at least once a year since then. Although it was one of Carter's earliest works, its strange rhythm and imagery are spellbinding and very mature, and yes, it does have echoes of traditional fairy tales, something that became somewhat of an obsession for Carter in later years. It's a wonderful story.

This is an odd story: Melanie and her siblings live a life of middle-class luxury until their parents die in a aeroplane accident in America. It quickly becomes apparent that their father had not thought of this possibility, so the house contents are sold up and the children sent to live with their mysterious Uncle Phillip in London.

So far, so not odd, we have all read a rich kid becomes poor through circumstance story. But this one is odd in that Uncle Phillip is a stern disciplinarian who resides over a poverty stricken household of his silent wife and her two brothers. Melanie cannot figure out why this woman has married her awful uncle, a malevolent puppet maker who cares more for his wooden creations than his family. The situation in the household slowly deteriorates, with the ill will seeming to grow as the days go by, until everything becomes undone in the violent climax.

Melanie is a character that it is hard to sympathise with, as though we are given insight into both her internal mental state and the awful things around her, I ended the book still not feeling a really knew her. Without giving away the plot, there seems to be a lot of inevitability that doesn't quite ring true. Or perhaps the author was attempting to underline how some people's life is swept on the currents of events they have no control over. Either way, I thought that the characters were interesting, I only wish that I could have understood their motivations a little better.

A tour de force for Angela Carter. This novel is a perfectly formed gem cut in the inimitable Carter style. The story of Melanie, the 'bourgeois screamer' and her journey 'through the mangle' in the form of her experiences in the magic toyshop is a gripping read which sheds much light on Carter's stance towards, among many things, the subjugation of women and the role they take, or are forced to take, in society. This being a Carter novel, the character of Melanie is particularly well drawn, and her exploits operate within the framework of numerous fairy tale paradigms, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty being the most obvious. Melanie is orpahned at the novel's outset and is transported 'from rural comfort' to the grimy, gritty, basic world of real life in london, in the form of her Uncle Philip's home and livelihood, the magic toyshop. There is very little truly magic about the toyshop however. Despite the numerous fairy tale motifs and subtle literary allusions woven into the novel's fabric ( the younger siblings are reliable literary jokes, while uncle philip is a wonderfully overblown carboard cut out of the melodramatic victorian villain) the plot makes Carter's renounciation, and eventual deconstruction of the role the patrairch takes in society clear. Carter may wish us to consider deeper issues, yet, as with all her work, there is a profound sense of fun imbuing the magic toyshop with an inherent readability. Melanie is of course an upper crust adoloscent thrown into a nightmarish, 'dirty' world, and we can take sadistic delight in observing her naivety, her bizzare reasoning, and her faltering steps into puberty. Yet Carter allows Melanie a strong elemnt of adaptibility: she rarely complains about the lot fate has thrown her, so the strength of the female (espacially when we consider the role of Aunt margaret and her moral immutability) is never far from our minds.
This was the first carter I read and I havent looked back since. The fairy tale elements and strong narrative, as well as the skillful characterization of Melanie ( a character in whom there is little reflection of Carter herself) make this an easy and enjoyable read, while there is plenty of meat in the prose for anyone to chew on: feminism, sixties culture, family units, growing up, romance and love, art, clothing and the nature of theatre, of drama itself, are all tackled in detail. Highly reccomended for carter virgins and afficiandos alike.

i read the magic toy shop as a part of a school project. i have to admit, the only thing i heard prior to reading the book was that it contained "scary puppets". but as soon as i hit the first page, i was hooked. the creative style of writing by ms. carter is different from any other author i have read; she is truly unique. i would recommend the magic toyshop to anyone looking for a good laugh, but this book is definitely not for the kiddies. enjoy!

Angela Carter was a master of really weird magical realism. Her second book "The Magic Toyshop," is basically a forcible coming of age/first love story, wrapped in a fairy-tale ambience and exquisitely detailed writing, but it's hard not to be frustrated by the abrupt, bizarre finale.

Melanie and her two siblings are suddenly orphaned, and whisked away from the beautiful country house and idyllic life they've always known. Soon they're living in a slummy area of the city, with their brutish toymaker Uncle Philip, wraithlike mute Aunt Margaret, and her two brothers, in a house that is crammed with the magnificent toys that Uncle Philip creates.

Melanie finds herself increasingly drawn to her aunt's brother Finn, a feisty Irish boy who hides an artistic soul and a punk attitude -- and he and Philip are locked in a silent war. As the family tensions come to a climax, Melanie learns of a dark secret that Aunt Margaret is hiding, and which can only end in a horrific tragedy.

"The Magic Toyshop's" title would make you think that it's about... well, the toys, or the toymaker. Instead, it's all about Melanie's maturation into a young woman, and how she leaves her childhood behind. Unfortunately it starts to stagger toward the finale, as if Carter didn't know how to deal with all this stuff.

What makes this novel so intoxicating is the lush writing. Carter fills her prose with a ripe sensuality, rich in colours, sensations, feelings and impressions (such as the horrifying attack by a swan puppet, a la Leda). And she accurately captures a young girl's dreams and exploration, such as Melanie posing before a mirror, pretending to be a classic artist's model.

Unfortunately, the plot goes downhill in the last lap -- the shocking revelation is shocking mainly because it was never hinted at. And the ending feels tacked on, as if she just had to find SOME way of ending the plot quickly and took the most flamboyant one. It's also incredibly depressing and unsatisfying.

The characters are also unevenly portrayed -- Melanie and Finn are compelling as the young future lovers, one romantic and disgusted by the place she now finds herself, and the other a tough, kindly urchin. The other characters are rather underdeveloped -- Melanie's brother and sister are basically props, Finn's older brother is a shadow, and Philip is an ogre.

"The Magic Toyshop" is an exquisitely written novel, with a likably real teenage heroine, but marred by a contrived ending. Definitely worth a read, but not Carter at her best.

I had read The Magic Toyshop" for the first time ten years ago, in college, and was absolutely smitten with it. Now I re-read it and... I am not so uncritical of my awe. I can still admit that Carter's use of language, her ability to build the atmosphere and to get the reader into the book are superb. She maneuvres between styles, alluding to many archetypical images referring to art (Pre-Rafaelites are ever-present in this novel; all the characters seem to be directly taken out from Dante Gabriel Rosetti's paintings) and uses the symbols so that it is immediately obvious that she is an eloquent, well read author. But I have some doubts about the structure and the plot of this novel - if it is to be considered a novel, because if it is a feminist manifesto, an expression of a point of view (on many issues), or a collection of images tied together by a loose story, then it is perfect.

"The Magic Toyshop" central character is Melanie, a fifteen-year-old girl, who is just at the point of discovering her own physical femininity. Melanie spends the summer, while her parents are on the book tour in America, with her younger siblings, Jonathon, a constructor of ship models, and Victoria, a plump, overeating, cute five-year old, under care of the housekeeper, Mrs. Rundle. Melanie passes through her days daydreaming of being an adult woman (amazing wedding dress trying on scene), hoping to get married, and inventing stories, changing her life into fiction, until the terrible news about the death of her parents in the plane crash forces her, Jonathan and Victoria to move out of their beautiful house and their rich life. As orphans, the are taken into care of their mothers eccentric brother, uncle Philip. Melanie vaguely recalls him from her parents' wedding picture as well and from the repulsive gift she received from him once. She learns from Mrs. Rundle that the uncle has a wife now, which is surprising for some reason...

Uncle Philip is a toymaker who has a shop in London. Living in London, despite her shock and confusion, is an exciting prospect for Melanie. Upon their arrival, the children are picked up by their Irish aunt's brothers: Francie and Finn. On their way to the house, the kids learn that their aunt Margaret is dumb - she stopped speaking altogether on her wedding day.

Uncle Philip's house seems to Melanie small, neglected and creepy after her ordered, fashinable, posh home, and her new family a bunch of weird people, although they are oddly fascinated by all of them, especially the elvish Finn (who is an incredibly sexy young man!). Uncle Philip turns out to be an old tyrant, terrorizing the family with his peculiar ways and fond only of his puppets in his home theatre, where he makes the inscenizatons of well-known myths and tales. Or... is he really as Melanie sees him? And what is going on during the night behind the closed doors? What is Margaret's life really like?

We see everything through the eyes of Melanie, an adolescent girl with a vivid (not to say sick) imagination. The symbolic imagery evokes a lot of associations which are the food for thought. All the characters are obviously symbolic and many themes are explored, the objectivization of women (all the women basically, but especially Melanie, who cannot escape her fate in real life, she can only create the fictional reality to hide inside it), exploration of female sexuality together with its dangers (Melanie again), the importance of literacy (Aunt Margaret), the mad demiurge (uncle Philip). Despite being a clearly feminist writer (the women, even the absent ones, like Melanie's mother, represent great types and are portraited with brutal honesty, without flattery), Carter can be read on many levels and her novel a starting point for many hypotheses and discussions, there is no doubt about it. Additionally, it reads like an odd dream, everyday things have a magical quality to them, which makes it a fable and teleports the reader to a different, parralel plane. What is strange, is, first of all, the ending. The novel promises more than it really is, in terms of the plot, and does not meet the expectations in this area. The second strange thing is, that it seems to have so many threads and try to touch so many important topics, that there unavoidably must be, and are (in my opinion) some loose ends. What, for example, was the purpose of the scene with the severed hand in the kitchen drawer?
Nevertheless, this novel stays with the reader forever and is great as a brain stimulant. Although not the best of Carter's, it is definitely her own in terms of style and original voice, it is mesmerizing and makes me yearn for more. It just ends too early and abruptly...

Angela Carter was a genius. The book is written in a very floral, descriptive language that perhaps wth other writers would present a shallow novel. However, with Carter, every word counts. It is about a rich adolescent girl, Melanie, whose parents die and has to move from the country to working class london into her Uncle Phillips care. It is about patriarchial Power, a journey through adolescence and an exploration of sexuality, about classes and the roles that people are socialised into through society. It is about dreams and faerytales and her themes and ideas are all channelled through this.
It is a bizarre yet very very powerful novel and the ending is never very clear leaving the reader to sit and wonder. It provokes both thought and emotion and I strongly recommend this book to anyone buying a novel not just for enjoyment but also for an interest on the literary content.

This early Angela Carter novel is one of her simplist and best. I recently read a book , SIGHTS by Susanna Vance, that carries on Carter's otherworldly tradition of writing.