The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Fairy tales reimagined for feminist times

Grazia

The Bloody Chamber's interweaving of retold fairy tales demonstrates Angela Carter's narrative gift at its most mocking and seductive

Observer

She can glide from ancient to modern, from darkness to luminosity, from depravity to comedy without any hint of strain and without losing the elusive power of the original tales

The Times

Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality

Ian McEwan

The Bloody Chamber is such an important book to me. Angela Carter, for me, is still the one who said: ‘You see these fairy stories, these things that are sitting at the back of the nursery shelves? Actually, each one of them is a loaded gun. Each of them is a bomb. Watch: if you turn it right it will blow up.’ And we all went: ‘Oh my gosh, she’s right—you can blow things up with these!’

Neil Gaiman, Daily Telegraph

A wonderfully written book, ironical, cerebral, elegant . . . distinguished by bold, inflected language and ornate, indeed often bloody, imagery

Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review

She was, among other things, a quirky, original, and baroque stylist, a trait especially marked in The Bloody Chamber - her vocabulary a mix of finely tuned phrase, luscious adjective, witty aphorism, and hearty, up-theirs vulgarity

Margaret Atwood, Observer