The Passion of New Eve (Virago Modern Classics) (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

'If you can imagine Baudelaire, Blake and Kafka getting together to describe America, you are well on the way to Carter's visionary and lurid world' THE TIMES 'Her writing is pyrotechnic' OBSERVER

Product Description

This story follows Evelyn, a young Englishman, along a journey through mythology and sexuality. It is a story of how he learns to be a woman, first in the brutal hands of Zero, the ragtime Nietzsche, then through the ancient Tristessa, the beautiful ghost of Hollywood past.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group (December 27, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0860683419
• ISBN-13: 978-0860683414
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #91,305 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Witty, Subversive Study of Gender..., January 30, 2000

By A Customer

In this, one of Carter's boldest and most subversive novels, the protagonist undergoes an excrutiating exercise in de-masculinization. As a female, he realizes that women truly are "made" into nurturers, into mothers, into objects of sexual desire. Carter's prose is richly--chillingly--beautiful, as she describes one man's confusing transformation from being the "hunter" into the "hunted." Quite possibly Angela Carter's finest work--as well as one of the most provocative studies of gender construction in the Western world.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre But Brilliant!, July 27, 2001

By	Lauryn Angel-cann (Frisco, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the most outrageous Angela Carter novel I've read. Just when you begin to settle into one bizarre plot, Carter turns everything upside down and takes the story down a completely different avenue. She still manages, however, to bring all of her seemingly disparate plot elements together at the novel's satisfying close.

Evelyn's transformation from loathesome creep into a protagonist the reader actually cares about is a riotous roller-coaster ride, punctuated by Carter's beautiful prose and embellished by her perverse sense of humor. As always with Angela Carter, a satisfying, thought-provoking read!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars uncompromising and provoking, May 1, 2007

By	peter d pipinis (berri, s.a. australia) - See all my reviews

Angela Carter makes few concessions to the ordinary reader. She is abstruse, wilful, demanding, her vocabulary is immense, her intelligence daunting. She dares to make her characters one-dimensional (though colourful and believable), her story as unlikely and fantastic as possible.

The Passion Of New Eve is set in a vividly visualised, but almost unreal, civil-war-locked U.S.A. that is rapidly disintegrating into all-out civil war. 'Bizarre' might, perhaps, be an understatement when considering the plot. Amongst other things, Evelyn, a young, 'straight' young Englishman, is forced to undergo a sex-change operation that transforms him ('a change in the appearance will restructure the essence') into a perfect woman.

'Eve' is then - after an attempted escape - taken prisoner by Zero - a barbaric, one-eyed, one-legged man, and his personal harem of several 'wives', who worship him the more unquestioningly and eagerly, the more thoroughly he degrades them.

Following this, Eve - having found her true love - enjoys a sexual interlude in the desert that completes her realisation of herself as a fulfilled man-loving woman.

The best part of the novel is the beautiful ending. Here the author uses surrealistic imagery superbly in order to explore themes of time, re-birth and the inexorable power of nature. It is intensely affecting.

The whole book is held together by Carter's boldness and dazzling style. She is dreaming frightening and blackly resonant dreams, and by her artistry makes them plausible. A pity, then, that her uncompromising literary brilliance will alienate and bore those most in need of her provoking vision.