The Magic Toyshop (Student's Virago)

by Angela Carter

From the master of the literary supernatural and author of The Bloody Chamber, a startling tale of the redemptive power of physical and emotional love
 
One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother's wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the comfortable home of her childhood, she is sent to London to live with relatives she has never met: Aunt Margaret, beautiful and speechless, and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn, who kisses Melanie in the ruins of the pleasure gardens. And brooding Uncle Philip loves only the life-sized wooden puppets he creates in his toyshop. This classic gothic novel established Angela Carter as one of our most imaginative writers and augurs the themes of her later creative work.

• ISBN10: 0140256407
• ISBN13: 9780140256406
• Publish Date: 1 August 1996 (first published December 1967)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 1 October 2009
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Penguin USA
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 208
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780140256406

Reviews

[celinenyx]

This review should be prefaced with the statement that I know absolutely nothing about the author Angela Carter, nor anything about the context in which this was published. I came across The Magic Toyshop because it was recommended to me by a guy when I went book-swapping at a university event. He said it was good. I gave it a shot, completely blind - a rare thing for me nowadays.

Melanie lives a comfortable life with her parents, her nurse, and her two siblings. One night, she pulls on her mother's wedding dress and wanders through the garden. This event is the beginning of a series of events Melanie sees as her expulsion from Eden.

The Magic Toyshop is a story of a budding sexuality, of growing up, and of sexual sin. The imagery is occasionally heavily biblical; motifs include Eve's seduction and Noah's arc. Truth be told, I have very little knowledge of the bible and its mythology. As such, the nuances of this story and its implications for Melanie's sexuality went past me. I could only read it at its surface, and there was little enjoyment for me there. The synopsis on the back of the book practically covers the entire book, leaving little to the imagination of what direction the story will take. Melanie lives in an imagined world of extremes yet of little emotion. A great book to study, I'm sure - not a particularly nice one to read.

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Trigger warnings: incest between siblings, sexual assault of a minor by someone who is described as her future lover, severe emotional and physical abuse, references to and intended rape.