I had a heavy cold when I read The Magic Toyshop (1967) by Angela Carter last winter. I decided to stay in bed a whole day, a little feverish, with the four cats I live with coming to my room from time to time to see if everything was all right.
The day before I had received the book and was my first reading of Carter, a British writer and journalist openly feminist. Spending the day in bed seemed to be the perfect opportunity to discover the author. First of all the book cover drew my attention and I kept engrossed some time watching it before I could go to the first page, observing the disturbing yet gorgeous drawing of a terrified Leda being harassed by a puppet swan. Roxanna Bikadoroff is the author of this illustration which reflects superbly the nature of Carter's writing.
Under this singular cover I found a unique Bildungsroman or novel of initiation, a genre I find extremely pleasurable when written by women. From the first paragraph I became stuck in the reading. The reverie-like state in which I was thanks to my low-grade-fever probably helped me to enjoy the more this short novel in which love, subversion, growing-up, patriarchal oppression, struggle for freedom, and transgression parade embodied in unforgettable characters who perform through a rich and delicious prose full of cadence.
Carter's surreal, delicate, and powerful imagery let us plunge in a magical universe that combines a deep grey-coloured, bleak London with the blinding inner gleam of some of the characters that inhabit a to some extent Dickensian toyshop. Full of allusions, with a complex syntax –Carter's in love with subordination–, the use of alliteration and both dark and sparkling metaphors, this awesome, brilliantly peculiar piece of writing is so full of beauty as unsettling. A perfect reading for a winter heavy clouded evening, specially if you've caught a cold–