BOOK: Fireworks

(Reviewed by Eden Carter Wood)

Angela Carter. If you haven't discovered her before now, perhaps it's time.

The short stories in Fireworks are savage and dark, dealing with powerful, often twisted relationships. Carter's characters often inhabit vivid, frightening landscapes, the sort of places where fairytales and nightmares mingle, and her writing is fairly demanding on the reader; you have to be prepared to engage with it and concentrate, but the rewards are well worth it.

The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter is probably my favourite. It's an intense, disturbing tale of primitive incest (no wait! let me finish), beautifully written: 'The executioner insists his breakfast omelette be prepared only from those eggs precisely on the point of blossoming into chicks and, promptly at eight, consumes with relish a yellow, feathered omelette subtly spiked with claw.' In fact the whole collection is full of beautiful, fresh turns of phrase: 'I remember you as clearly as if you'd died yesterday', 'The beach is full of the garbage of the ocean', 'Then only the flies crawling on his body were alive and he was far from home.' It's unashamedly literary, and very, very good.

Virago Modern Classics, £7.99, virago.co.uk

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