Black Venus

De: Angela Carter

Narrado por: Clare Corbett, Toby Longworth

Extraordinary and diverse people inhabit this rich, ripe, occasionally raucous collection of short stories. Some are based on real people - Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire's handsome and reluctant muse who never asked to be called the Black Venus, trapped in the terminal ennui of the poet's passion, snatching at a little lifesaving respectability against all odds....

Edgar Allen Poe, with his face of an actor, demonstrating in every thought and deed how right his friends were when they said, 'No man is safe who drinks before breakfast'. And some of these people are totally imaginary. Such as the 17th century whore, transported to Virginia for thieving, who turns into a good woman in spite of herself among the Indians, who have nothing worth stealing. And a girl, suckled by wolves, strange and indifferent as nature, who will not tolerate returning to humanity.

Angela Carter wonderfully mingles history, fiction, invention, literary criticism, high drama and low comedy in a glorious collection of stories as full of contradictions and surprises as life itself.

©1985 Angela Carter (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Brilliant book, BUT they don’t name the short stories in the chapter list

I love Angela Carter’s short stories. I cannot tell you the level of thrilled I was when they became available on Audible. The stories are great, the performances are excellent. That said, this is a book of short stories, each story a chapter. Do they show the chapter titles? No, no they don’t. Which is just ridiculous. Her short story books are not meant to be read straight through. It is so irritating that it takes this wonderful book and brings the rating down. It’s like having a cookbook without listing the names of the recipes. A couple of her short story collections here on Audible are like this. The Bloody Chamber is not.