Hells yeah, I love man-eating Geisha puppets!

Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

by Angela Carter

Published by Penguin Books , 1996

462 Pages

Angela Carter is one of my most favorite authors EVER. Her prose is both wry and sultry, the plots of her novels and short stories surprising and exact, and her descriptions of people and places convey perpetual hauntedness. Normally, my problem with reading entire short story collection is that about half the stories are "okay", about a quarter are riveting, and the other quarter painfully dull. Not so with Carter. Every story had me enthralled, enchanted and otherwise utterly engaged.

It was a difficult decision, but I picked out 5 favorites that I urge you to go out and read straight away.

• "The Loves of Lady Purple": My favorite short story ever written. This story was originally included in her short story collection Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces and this story collection is mostly set in Asia. "The Loves of Lady Purple" is about an old puppet master and his ferocious and beautiful Geisha puppet, Lady Purple. In the puppet show, Lady Purple plays a murderous harlot and then goes back to her puppet box. One night, however, she comes to life, devours the old puppet master, and sets out to consume and destroy men. Hells yes.


• "The Bloody Chamber": From Carter's famous fairy tale collection by the same name comes this retelling of Bluebeard's last wife. However, in this tale the wife is not left murdered with the corpses of past wives, but finds redemption and love.
  
• "The Fall River Axe Murders": Published in 1985 in her short story collection Black Venus, "The Fall River Axe Murders" Imagines the life and perhaps mental illness of Lizzie Borden. An interesting psychological study that imagines some of the tense undercurrents of family life that may have existed.
  
• "Gun for the Devil": This short story has an old western / folklore feel and concerns a young pianist bargain with the devil. He bargains for a gun that will not miss a shot, but with the caveat that the last bullet will be fired at the discretion of the devil. Full of murder, lust, and revenge, this story was originally published in the American Ghosts and Old World Wonders collection in 1993.
  
• "The Snow Pavilion": An uncollected story, "The Snow Pavilion" is the story of an arrogant young poet engaged in an affair with a society woman. One night he is trapped outside in the snow and wanders into a mysterious house filled with giggles and really creepy dolls. That cry. That may, in fact, be trapped humans.... dum dum dum DUMMMMMMM...

All in all, an excellent collection of short stories from one of the best authors of Magical Realism.