"You never saw such a wild thing as my mother, her hat seized by the winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked round her waist, one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father's service revolver and, behind her, the breakers of the savage, indifferent sea, like the witnesses of a furious justice."

I hadn't read this collection since my college days, and it was an absolute treat to come back to it now, without the baggage of having to write a paper or exam on it. And yet, I still found myself studying it carefully at times, because it's a work that demands to be dissected. The individual stories reference one another in surprising ways compel the reader to go back to previous tales in order to fully unearth the connection. The intricately worded sentences force us to slow down in order to fully unlock their meaning. And, of course, there are the source materials crowding around the edges of Carter's own re-imaginings.

For me, the standouts in the collection are the title piece (from which the above quote is taken), The Erl-King, and The Lady of the House of Love.

I picked this copy up recently, a beautifully printed 75th anniversary edition whose pages have a lovely thick texture and almost rough edges that give it the feel of a manuscript.

It's sort of weird that it took me so long to read Angela Carter - dark feminist leaning fairytale retellings are near and dear to my heart. This collection took me a while to get through, though that's no fault of the stories themselves. Carter's writing is rich, sumptuous, and dense enough it's worth taking your time to read. There were moments where the writing itself dazzled me as much as the storytelling. The stories do tent to run together a bit, which is why I took breaks and read this collection in between other books. All in all I liked this collection, though I'll admit I was hoping for it to be a bit darker after everything I had heard. If you're looking for solid horror this collection doesn't quite deliver, but if you're looking for something a bit on the dark side this comes through in spades.

This short story collection was not my cup of tea. Angela Carter writing style is flowery, verbose, convoluted, very description-heavy and symbolical, a writing style I don´t particularly like. And to be honest, some of these stories went over my head and I didn´t get a grasp on the feminist overtones that this book apparently has to offer. Instead I was put off by the constant display of sex and power and the repetitiveness of the fairy tales Angela Carter has used for her short stories.

I´m still waiting for a short story collection that works for me. This one, unfortunately, didn´t, even though I really liked the story "The Bloody Chamber".

The Beauty and the Beast retold and this story was kind of boring. The story has been to rushed, with the hand licking on their very first day together, Beautys sudden departure and her change of heart and rushing back to the beast after she has forgotten all about him for a considerable amount of time. Truth to be told, Beauty isn´t a very likeable character in this story. 

The Beauty and the Beast isn´t my favorite fairy tale and Angela Carters short story hasn´t been able to change my mind about this fact.