The Invention of Angela Carter

出版者:Chatto & Windus

作者:Edmund Gordon

页数:544

出版时间:2016-10-13

价格:GBP 14.99

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780701187569

具体描述

Angela Carter is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and beguiling writers of the last century. Her work stands out for its bawdiness and linguistic zest, its hospitality to the fantastic and the absurd, and its extraordinary inventiveness and range. Her life was as modern and as unconventional as anything in her fiction.

Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne in 1940, her story spans the latter half of the twentieth century. After escaping an oppressive childhood and a difficult early marriage, the success of her first novels enable the freedoms of travel – journeying across America in a Greyhound bus, and then on to Tokyo, where she lived for three transformative years – before settling in London to write her last, great novels, amid the joys of late motherhood and prestigious teaching posts abroad. By the time of her tragic and untimely death at the age of fifty-one, she was firmly established as an iconoclastic writer whose fearlessly original work had reinvigorated the literary landscape and inspired a new generation.

This is the story of how Angela Carter invented herself – as a new kind of woman and a new kind of writer – and how she came to write such seductive works as The Bloody Chamber, Nights at the Circus and Wise Children. Edmund Gordon has followed in Carter’s footsteps to uncover a life rich in incident and adventure. With unrestricted access to her manuscripts, letters and journals, and informed by dozens of interviews with her friends and family, this major biography offers a definitive portrait of one of our most dazzling writers.

作者简介

Edmund Gordon studied philosophy at Trinity College Dublin and English literature at University College London, and since 2011 has been a lecturer in English at King's College London. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, he has also written for a variety of other publications in Britain and the US, including Bookforum and The Guardian.

用户评价

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这部作品的叙事手法堪称一绝，作者仿佛是一位技艺高超的织工，将错综复杂的情节线索编织得天衣无缝。我尤其欣赏其对人物内心世界的细腻刻画，那种层层剥开、直抵灵魂深处的描写，让人在阅读时忍不住屏住呼吸。故事的节奏把握得极好，时而如清泉般涓涓细流，娓娓道来历史的沉淀与情感的暗涌；时而又似山洪暴发，将读者的情绪推向高潮，那种张力让人欲罢不能。它不是那种一眼就能看穿的线性叙事，而是充满了多重解读的空间，每一次重读都能发现新的光影和隐藏的意义。作者对语言的驾驭能力，更是一种纯粹的享受，那些精准而富有诗意的词汇，构建了一个既真实又带着魔幻色彩的世界。读完合上书本，那种意犹未尽的感觉，久久萦绕心头，仿佛自己也参与了书中人物的漫长旅程，见证了他们每一次挣扎与蜕变。

这是一部需要沉下心来细品的文学佳作，它不适合在嘈杂的环境中匆匆翻阅。作者构建的世界观，充满了微妙的象征意义和隐晦的批判色彩，它像一张巨大的网，捕获了现代社会中许多微妙的社会病理。我欣赏作者敢于触碰禁忌话题的勇气，以及处理这些敏感内容时所展现出的克制与深刻。特别是书中对于权力结构与个体反抗之间的张力描写，处理得极其精妙，没有流于表面化的口号式批判，而是深入到日常的微观权力博弈之中。读这本书，感觉就像是在进行一场漫长的智力对话，你需要不断地去解码作者隐藏的线索和典故。这种高强度的参与感，让阅读过程本身就成为了一种回报，让人由衷地赞叹作者构建复杂叙事迷宫的能力。

令人惊叹的是，这本书在保持其文学高度的同时，并没有牺牲掉故事的引人入胜的特质。它拥有一种强大的磁力，能将不同背景的读者都拉入其叙事的核心。我发现自己常常在深夜被某些场景或某句台词吸引，不得不重新拿起它阅读。作者对情绪的捕捉极其精准，无论是突如其来的喜悦，还是漫长的压抑，都能通过精妙的场景调度和人物反应展现出来。它让我重新思考了许多关于身份认同和自我定义的问题，那些看似坚不可摧的边界，在作者的笔下变得如此脆弱和可塑。这本书的价值在于，它提供了一个安全却又极其真实的场域，供我们面对自身的复杂性。读完后，我甚至开始留意自己日常生活中那些被忽略的、细微的“发明”与“创造”，这无疑是一次深刻的思维拓展。

坦白说，初翻开这本书时，我有些担心它会过于晦涩难懂，毕竟题材的广度和深度摆在那里。然而，作者的笔触却意外地轻盈而有力，成功地将宏大的主题融入到极富生活气息的细节之中。这本书最打动我的，是它对“存在”这一哲学命题的探讨，它没有给出标准答案，而是像一面棱镜，折射出人性中光怪陆离的侧面。书中对环境和时代背景的描摹，细致入微，仿佛能闻到那个特定年代特有的气味，感受到那时的社会氛围对个体命运的无形塑造。我特别喜欢那些看似不经意的对话，它们往往蕴含着巨大的信息量，是推动情节和揭示人物性格的关键。整体而言，这本书的阅读体验是丰富且多维的，它挑战了我的既有认知，迫使我走出舒适区去审视那些曾经被忽略的角落。