so-soThis was a weird book. My first time reading Angela Carter, too. Published in 1969, 10 years before The Bloody Chamber, it is a post-apocalyptic story in which, after nuclear war, the surviving people have split into 3 categories; the Professors, the educated who have become the leaders (and within their societies we have the Soldiers and the Workers), the Barbarians, travellers before the war who raid Professor villages, (cont. in comments 👇🏻)
i.z.booknook (1) and the Out People, those who were in the cities when the bombs dropped and have mutated. It is a very interesting premise and one I have seen more recently in films like Doomsday, etc, so must have been a really original idea at the time and one that has resonated. However, the story is more to do with the characters than what happened. 1mo
i.z.booknook (2) Goodreads and Amazon have listed this under romance… This is a worse romance book than It Ends With Us, which is saying something! There are several extremely questionable events that feel like they‘re sort of brushed past and I can‘t work out if that is because it is an example of the crumbling of the society or a reflection of the times this book was written in and so I am still unsure how I feel about this book. 1mo
i.z.booknook (3) There are some really interesting ideas and themes in the book, such as religion and the idea of creating a new religion from which to lead people, and some of the descriptions and language, specifically at the start where she introduces us to this new world, is very specific and loaded with meaning so we get really nice, abstract images. 1mo
i.z.booknook (4) After finishing this book though, I am still unsure of what I am supposed to be thinking or feeling, or what the message was. For such a well-known feminist author the message I felt I came away with was anything but feminist which makes me think I‘ve completely misunderstood the book. I don‘t know. 1mo
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