Featured New Authors
Featured Author: Angela Carter
Featured Author: Angela Carter
With News and Reviews From the Archives of The New York Times
In This Feature
Related Links
 Richard Mildenhall/ Camera Press |
| Angela Carter |
(1967)
“The characters in Angela Carter’s first novel live in ‘the twilight zone,’ on the underside of respectable English life. . . . They are grotesque, these people, yet familiar. . . . The result is a most entertaining
piece of piracy, and most accomplished novel.”
(1969)
“. . . marred by some unconvincing dialogue and a good deal of overwriting. . . . The first three-quarters of the book gives a powerful account of the horror, the logic and the poetry of the schizophrenic’s world.
The end, however, is rather disappointing.”
(1970)
“Though set in the future, its imagery and references are continually to the art of the past . . . Carter tells her story with considerable skill. Her observation is sharp, and she writes extremely well”
(1974)
“Angela Carter is at her best with details. Scrupulously, she builds the foundations of her myth out of hundreds of small observations. . . . This is not to say that ‘The War of Dreams’ is without problems.”
(1979)
“Carter’s position is fierce, unaccommodating and aggressively stated: Pornography is a means of perpetuating the oppression of women . . . Carter is so manifestly intelligent, so passionate in her argument, that one
feels more than the usual regret at seeing her subject bring down another mind . . .”
(1980)
“Perhaps there are thousands of readers ready for the cutesy mannerisms and comical overwriting . . . with which she improvises her fairy tales and horror tales. . . . her collection suddenly and decisively improves near
the end.”
(1985)
“[Carter] might have remembered that at the circus, or in a book, the real trick is to quit while you’re ahead, to get off stage with the audience begging for more. . . . It’s wonderful to read, but there comes
a time when you long for the circus to be over so you can go home to your quiet bed.”
(1986)
“. . . not only immensely readable in itself but should send readers to her other work . . . Carter’s is an absolutely unique voice, intensely literary without being precious, deep without being difficult . . .”
(1992)
“. . . may not be Angela Carter’s most provocative and arresting work of fiction, but it inhabits its own manic universe, and would probably translate, with the right talent, into a spirited, bawdy musical comedy-farce
of the kind in which the Chance sisters themselves performed, long ago.”
(1996)
“As a writer, Carter could do almost anything. . . . Some critics have seen Carter as a follower of magic realism; yet she is, even more, the natural heiress of a northern Gothic tradition.”
(1971)
“This spirited expressionist performance has stylistic affinities with American high Gothic . . . One doesn’t know whether one is cued in for a belly laugh, a nervous giggle or a shudder of horror.”
(December 7, 1986)
Carter comically deconstructs Dr. Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
(February 19, 1992)
Carter’s obituary.
(March 8, 1992)
“She was the first great writer I ever met, and she was one of the best, most loyal, most truth-telling, most inspiring friends anyone could ever have. I cannot bear it that she is dead.”
Source link
