The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington

February 20, 2017
The surrealist painter and writer Carrington (The Hearing Trumpet) was rescued from a Spanish mental institution by her nanny and spirited away in a submarine—and her fiction is stranger than the facts of her life. A menagerie of eccentric humans, bloodthirsty talking animals, and hybrid creatures is on display in her fantastic, and fantastical, collection of stories. “I’ve always detested balls, especially when they are given in my honour,” says the narrator of “The Debutante,” the memorable opening tale. As is the case throughout, the narrator coolly maintains an arch tone as things take a gruesome, surreal turn. The next story, “The Oval Lady,” which depicts a chilling confrontation between a headstrong youth and a paternal tyrant, demonstrates how effectively Carrington weds whimsy and terror. Among the works, which were written in English, Spanish, and French, are a melancholy fairy tale (“The Three Hunters”), a medicopolitical satire involving Soviet rats trained to operate on people (“Et in Bellicus Lunarum Medicalis”), and a nightmarish depiction of lustful appetites (“The Sisters”). Some of the caprice-like entries fail to leave a lasting impression, but each contains at least one arresting image or deadpan witticism: “I myself am modern and a complete atheist like all enlightened ecclesiastics.” The best use their grotesque conceits or savage comedy to plumb the mysteries of life’s dread desires: “You can’t love anyone until you have drawn blood and dipped in your fingers and enjoyed it.”

March 15, 2017
The first complete collection by English surrealist Carrington (1917-2011) includes three previously unpublished stories.Most of these 25 stories are brief gothic tales lush with surprising detail, set in worlds where the supernatural and aristocracy overlap. In -The Royal Summons,- a queen bathes in goat's milk with live sponges and a talking tree chases a girl. Girls strive to escape nightmarish families in several of the early stories; in others, woodsy half-humans live more freely: a forest nymph in -As They Rode Along the Edge,- who sold her soul -for a kilo of truffles,- has sex with a handsome boar -under a mountain of cats.- The more macabre fables risk being campy but achieve an oneiric, Jungian effect, such as -Pigeon, Fly!- in which a woman paints a corpse's portrait and discovers -the face on the canvas was my own.- Animals transform into people and vice versa, unsure which is the true self. In -Jemima and the Wolf,- a wild girl with claws and thorns in her hair falls in love with a shape-shifter and is misled by a corpse. Some of the later stories show women fleeing marriages or critique technology and politics, including a short satire in which a tiny effigy of Stalin is exploited to create magic medicine. Carrington's prose is precise and droll, even when translated from French or Spanish. Her best stories glory in fantastic rebellion against gender constructs and class even as they tend toward shock and tragedy. Quite a few are silly but end abruptly, and there's a lot of sharp, wise humor, too, with bons mots such as, -How can anybody be a person of quality if they wash away their ghosts with common sense?- Feels a bit dated but nevertheless a key work in the history of literary weirdness.

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