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juushikaTitle: The Magic Toyshop
Author: Angela Carter
Published: New York: Penguin Books, 1996 (1967)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 101,807
Text Number: 292
Read Because: fan of the author, purchased used at the Corvallis Book Bin
Review: Melaine walks through the garden at night in her mother's wedding dress, and the next morning discovers that everything has changed: her parents dead, she and her sibling must leave the comfort of their home to live with her strange, poor relatives above a toyshop. From here, Melanie's story blossoms into a beautifully inexplicit, haunted, magic-tinged coming of age. Her adolescence is troubled but joyful—Carter of course has a particular knack for finding both the beauty and blood in this sort of thing. I wouldn't quite call The Magic Toyshop magical realism, but it leans that way, in atmosphere more than event, putting Melanie's story in terms somewhat more large and vibrant than life, to the benefit, rather than detriment, of its truth. A supporting cast at once finely detailed and slightly caricatured supports this real-world fairy tale sense. And Carter's prose is also a delight, poetic and precise, here somewhat subdued and shadowed, but with an undulled perceptive edge.
And yet The Magic Toyshop pales, for me, in comparison to Carter's short fiction, in particular The Bloody Chamber. This is an issue I can't quite seem to overcome, and so I can't hold it against this book: I love those short works so fiercely I don't know if anything, even from Carter's own hand, can ever measure up to them. Perhaps it's the intensity fostered by their brevity—there are some remarkable moments in The Magic Toyshop (and much of the first chapter is simply breathtaking), but in a novel-length work these can both run long and get a bit lost within a sea of words, and the quieter, less fantastic imagery of this book (lovely as it is) exacerbates that. Perhaps it's just that The Bloody Chamber was my introduction to Carter, and first love is strong. Whatever it is, it makes it hard for me to review this book: it was a joy to read and I reflect favorably upon it now, but it wasn't all I hoped it would be—and I suspect that nothing, no matter how good, could be. I'm left with a tinge of disappointment as a result, but I still recommend The Magic Toyshop: for all my personal caveats, it remains a piece of art.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Angela Carter
Published: New York: Penguin Books, 1996 (1967)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 101,807
Text Number: 292
Read Because: fan of the author, purchased used at the Corvallis Book Bin
Review: Melaine walks through the garden at night in her mother's wedding dress, and the next morning discovers that everything has changed: her parents dead, she and her sibling must leave the comfort of their home to live with her strange, poor relatives above a toyshop. From here, Melanie's story blossoms into a beautifully inexplicit, haunted, magic-tinged coming of age. Her adolescence is troubled but joyful—Carter of course has a particular knack for finding both the beauty and blood in this sort of thing. I wouldn't quite call The Magic Toyshop magical realism, but it leans that way, in atmosphere more than event, putting Melanie's story in terms somewhat more large and vibrant than life, to the benefit, rather than detriment, of its truth. A supporting cast at once finely detailed and slightly caricatured supports this real-world fairy tale sense. And Carter's prose is also a delight, poetic and precise, here somewhat subdued and shadowed, but with an undulled perceptive edge.
And yet The Magic Toyshop pales, for me, in comparison to Carter's short fiction, in particular The Bloody Chamber. This is an issue I can't quite seem to overcome, and so I can't hold it against this book: I love those short works so fiercely I don't know if anything, even from Carter's own hand, can ever measure up to them. Perhaps it's the intensity fostered by their brevity—there are some remarkable moments in The Magic Toyshop (and much of the first chapter is simply breathtaking), but in a novel-length work these can both run long and get a bit lost within a sea of words, and the quieter, less fantastic imagery of this book (lovely as it is) exacerbates that. Perhaps it's just that The Bloody Chamber was my introduction to Carter, and first love is strong. Whatever it is, it makes it hard for me to review this book: it was a joy to read and I reflect favorably upon it now, but it wasn't all I hoped it would be—and I suspect that nothing, no matter how good, could be. I'm left with a tinge of disappointment as a result, but I still recommend The Magic Toyshop: for all my personal caveats, it remains a piece of art.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
