The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories (Penguin Ink) Paperback – Deckle Edge, March 29, 2011

I really enjoyed this collection of fairy tales for adults, as in some of the stories have adult subjects. It was a college textbook, but I intend to read the whole thing for pleasure.

It was a required read for school, but I did enjoy it. Good deal.

These re-imagined fairy tales are delightful and amazing. They are more in line with the original darker tone of the tales but still intrigue the reader.

I loved this the first time I read it, and still do. A magical concoction of fairy tales, eroticism, and gorgeous writing.

Fairy tales with an edge and a twist. Carter is truly a master at turning a phrase and evoking resonance in her readers.

I got this book as a recommendation for fairy tale retellings in a darker tone. So far I am absolutely in love.Three wives dead, one never found in a boating accident and the story is called "The Bloody Chamber"? It got darker the further I read.Her new husband is thoroughly obsessed with a ruby choker he gave her, especially while he is taking her virginity and he forces her to wear it. It was his grandmother's and was used as a fancy version of the red ribbons for Madame Guillotine fashion during the French Revolution.As soon as he showed her his ring of keys, and the one he doesn't want her to use, I knew the story was the tale of Bluebeard who has a room full of dead wives. I didn't even think that he was setting her up for failure by enticing her with the key. He wanted her to disobey.It ends too deus ex machina with her mother riding in to save the day. Angela Carter even writes that it was too easy because she says the mother had 'maternal telepathy.'The writing got a little flowery for me and I just wanted faster paced prose, but overall it was a beautiful story and I'm really looking forward to the others.Some of my favorite lines:"A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat." - Page 6"After the dreadful revelation of that bloody chamber, it was his tender look that made me faint." - Page 33

The Bloody Chamber is a deliciously dark little volume of fairy tales by the famed Angela Carter. I loved some of them more than others, but the majority of the stories are really good. In a morbid sort of way. Some, like the title story, are disturbingly bloody, others, like "Puss-In-Boots" are bawdily funny. "The Bloody Chamber" is a retelling of Bluebeard, and this book also includes "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", a Beauty and the Beast retelling, "The Tiger's Bride", also a Beauty and the Beast retelling, "Puss-In-Boots", "The Erl-King", "The Snow Child", "The Lady of the House of Love" which is a vampire story, "The Werewolf", "The Company of Wolves", and "Wolf-Alice". My favorites are the first five or so; they're more entertaining and less completely dark (except for "The Bloody Chamber", of course).These stories are populated by beasts, and vampires, and werewolves, and witches, dark and gripping, and dark and grim. Angela Carter has a really distinctive writing style; it's sensual and descriptive, dense but somehow not overwritten. But also, each story has its own tone. "The Bloody Chamber" is descriptive and horrifying, "Puss-In-Boots" is narrated by the rascally cat himself, and both Beauty and the Beast stories are quite different too. "The Tiger's Bride", though similar in title to one of my favorite books, The Tiger's Wife, is not at all like the latter book. The "Beauty" character is gambled away by her father to a mysterious masked lord.I love dark fairy tales, and of the various collections I've read (My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, The Rose and the Beast, Lies Knives and Girls in Red Dresses, etc), The Bloody Chamber is by far the best of these books. It also the most deeply and chillingly dark, to the core.One note on the edition I read: it's from Penguin, a special Penguin Ink edition, and it's marvelously beautiful, in the style of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions, though it's not a classic...yet. I loved the art and the feel of the cover and the font in this book. It's the kind of design that you never get tired of looking at and feeling. I really want to own this book now, not only for the amazing quality of its stories, but also for its design. I also really want to read Nights at the Circus, another of Angela Carter's works. Hint hint.All of my reviews can be read at my blog, novareviews.blogspot.com.

I would not buy this book. It was a horible read. The best thing about it is the art on the cover.

If you haven't read this you really should.Carter loves to rip up the rule book and shock her readers, one of her later works, her writing is excellently refined in this collection of fairytale retellings.

Loved this book! We read it for book club, fantastic. A bit twisted, a bit dark. Clearly a true talent. Brilliant.

Brilliant item and handy quotations :)

good for gcse

Came promptly, as described