Ten fairy tales, stripped to the bone and set on fire: Carter's Gothic retellings bite back.
Who drives the story
A wealthy French aristocrat with three dead wives and a taste for pornographic art. He marries a teenage pianist, tests her with a forbidden key, and dies by his mother-in-law's gun.
A beautiful teenage bride who disobeys one rule and finds the bodies. She survives, keeps the red mark on her forehead, and turns her inheritance into a music school.
A gun-toting ex-... actually, the book only shows her bursting in to shoot the Marquis at the last moment. Maternal rescue, Gothic style.
A young tradesman who asks the bride to play for him and stays beside her at the chopping block, knowing he cannot save her.
One cuts off her grandmother's paw and inherits her goods; the other, raised by wolves, grows human enough to pity a monster.
Also in the story
In 'Mr Lyon' she nearly forgets the Beast and nearly kills him with neglect; in 'The Tiger's Bride' her double chooses fur over humanity.
A cynical, amorous con-man cat who engineers his master's love affair and his own, and dispatches the old husband with a well-timed trip.
The greenwood made flesh, who cages girls as birds. His last seduction strangles him with his own hair.
A midwinter riding couple whose marriage curdles when the Count wishes a snow-and-blood girl into being; the Countess's jealousy kills the child.
A Romanian countess-vampire who feeds on young men until a virgin soldier's kiss kills her, freeing him for the trenches.
How they are connected
actually, the book only shows her bursting in to shoot the Marquis at the last moment.
The Count and CountessThe werewolf girl and the wolf-girl
A midwinter riding couple whose marriage curdles when the Count wishes a snow-and-blood girl into being; the Countess's jealousy kills the child.
The vampire ladyThe Count and Countess
A Romanian countess-vampire who feeds on young men until a virgin soldier's kiss kills her, freeing him for the trenches.
Go deeper
Fairy tales stripped to their latent content · Women who act · Beastliness and desire · Mirrors and selfhood
Themes explainedThe full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.
Open the summary