Bingo Chart Review: The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter



I read this book as part of my Bingo Chart Reading Challenge. With this I can cross out “Read a collection of short stories”. I picked this because it came highly recommended by Jean BookishThoughts on Youtube. 

This is a collection of short stories, seemingly all based on fairy tales. I say seemingly because there is one or two where I can’t recognize the fairy tale, but that is probably just me being dimwitted. Most of the other stories are recognizably based on Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast and Puss-in-Boots to name some. 

I really liked the writing of these stories. They are all beautifully written and Carter can conjure up an eerie feeling with just a few words. But, as I have recently discovered, short stories just aren’t for me. I just can’t seem to get into the story, when it’s that short. And if I can’t get into it and connect with the characters I find myself pretty much uninterested. I will say that I really enjoyed one or two of the longer stories, but mostly I just felt like I was skimming the surface of the narrative. I will definitely pick up more of Carter’s work, though as the writing was beautiful. 

As for the particular stories in this collection, I did enjoy a few of them, but while the rest were beautifully written I did have some issues apart from the fact of them being short stories. I felt like this collection was a bit repetitive. There were a few stories that were pretty much the same story, like “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” and “The Tiger’s Bride” were apparently both based on Beauty and the Beast, and while the details of the two stories were different the underlying plot was the same, and that made it feel like pretty much the same story. The same goes for the 3 stories about werewolves. 


While short stories just aren’t for me and I did find some of these stories repetitive I still gave this book 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads, as I really enjoyed the writing. 

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