a perverse kind of enjoyable, but hey i find my enjoyment in many different kinds of places. but even if i don't agree with Carter's vision, her phenomenal and thoroughly idiosyncratic skill at constructing berserk narratives & her use of language that is full of nuance and spikiness & her ability to tell stories that read like diabolical fairy tales are all entirely in place. wasn't i? i don't remember i probably was taking too many drugs at the time, much like the characters in this book. well she did write this when she was 30 or so and i was probably prey to the same feelings at that age. i don't believe in Carter's analysis of love and relationships. I suppose i should say what i think this novel is about so that this "review" is actually a review and not a book report. shudder! i lived in a world like this for a few years and thank God it was nothing like Love's Inferno. but nope, this was actually a "contemporary" novel dealing with actual characters and their relationships. the writing is so offbeat that at first i thought all the characters and scenarios were meant to be postmodern constructs and a series of dream scenes. her language is as brilliant as ever, full of evilly sardonic non sequitors and stylized dialogue and lots of surprising bits of characterization and of course imagery that is surreal, hyperreal, unreal, and grimily realistic. If you love Angela Carter as much as i do, you will find much to enjoy in this novel. what is Love and what is it saying about "love"? honestly, nothing that i want to know. the plot is pretty much the detailing of the strange, disturbing dance between the three. it stars: a charmless young miss who comes from money & paints surreal landscapes over all of her walls and who is clearly both bonkers and toxic (our heroine!) a perfectly nice young man who is pleasing to the eye and who just wants to be happy and who has an arsenal of disarming smiles and who ties up and beats his girlfriend when she irritates him (our hero!) an animalistic brother who has decided to continually live in his school of hard knocks and who does eventually call for an ambulance after he finds a person who has tried to commit suicide - but not until he takes a few cool snaps (our villain?). Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, Hey! it is set in late 60s London (i presume - i think the city is nameless) within that special milieu that exists on the outskirts of many colleges - an artsy, ambisexual, insular, young, messy milieu. Love - a title steeped in so much sick irony, given the novel's cruel narrative and its wintry themes - is about an insane young lady, her beau, his demented brother, the apartment that all three share, and how lives just go on no matter what. but interesting! i quickly finished the whole glass. maybe not refreshing or pleasing to the taste buds. still, i found the taste to be surprisingly interesting. Love - a title steeped in so much sick irony, given the novel's cruel narrative and its wintry themes - is about an insane young lady, her beau, his d i thought Angela was handing me a flute full of bubbly champagne but it turned out to be a glass of spicy vinegar from a jar of pickled peppers & sausages.
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