The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington

by Leonora Carrington Narrated by Justine Eyre

Overview

Surrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington was a master of the macabre, of gorgeous tableaus, biting satire, roguish comedy, and brilliant, effortless flights of the imagination. Nowhere are these qualities more ingeniously brought together than in the works of short fiction she wrote throughout her life.



The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington collects for the first time all of Carrington's stories. With a startling range of styles, subjects, and even languages (several of the stories are translated from French or Spanish), The Complete Stories captures the genius and irrepressible spirit of an amazing artist's life.



Contains mature themes.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/20/2017
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.” (Apr.)

From the Publisher

In both her prose and her visual art, Carrington dissolves the borders between human and inhuman, fantasy and reality, death and life. In The Complete Stories we meet a mad queen who uses squirming live sponges to wash herself; a corpse that casts a circle of light in the forest; and a horse-woman who lives among plants and animals because humans won't accept her hybrid state. Whenever Carrington's heroines are forced to pledge allegiance, they always choose the company of beasts.” —Joy Press, Los Angeles Times

“This is the best description of what it feels like to read her work: In the middle of the fluffy fairy tale, something bristles, something unpleasantly familiar, something human and frightening.” —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review

“This definitive collection of Carrington's short fiction is a treasure and a gift to the world. A stunning achievement.” —Jeff VanderMeer

“Leonora Carrington has unswervingly followed the intensity of her own particular vision and way of being. . . . Her work bristles with a fierce, unconventional brand of feminism; anger gives it its final edge of irony and power.” —Angela Carter

“Her delirious fantasy reveals to us a little of the secret magic of her paintings.” —Luis Buñuel

“The writing is as neat, dry and witty as the content is wild, woolly and portentous.” —The Times Literary Supplement

“Kathryn Davis's wonderful introduction to this complete collection (published in conjunction with the centennial of Carrington's birth) is a satisfying piece on its own, delightedly preparing the reader for a writer bestowed with a satisfying mix of the most wicked yet tender of visions.” —Entropy

“Carrington's stories are optimistic and nihilistic, beautiful and grotesque, tender and cruel. She never contented herself with something simple or trite, a philosophy of life that can be shortened and simplified and put in a fortune cookie.” —Sheila Heti

“Her protagonists speak to gods, monsters, parents, and strangers in the same fearlessly ironic voice. Irrational or horrible things happen to people in these stories just as they do in fairy tales, dreams, the Bible, and real life. Intending to destroy dualistic viewpoints, Carrington offers no glib moral judgments.” —The Village Voice

“Her stories are vivid, funny and surprisingly fresh . . . [combining] satire with surrealist situations to deftly mock the pomposity of organized religion, sexual repression or the endless forms of bureaucratic hypocrisy and ineptitude.” —The New York Times

“A menagerie of eccentric humans, bloodthirsty talking animals, and hybrid creatures is on display in her fantastic, and fantastical, collection of stories.” —Publishers Weekly

“The Complete Stories and Down Below are both remarkable books; read together they are almost overwhelming. The Carrington centennial should stand as one of the great literary events of 2017. I know that I will be pressing these books on friends, family, and acquaintances for years to come.” —Tor.com

Kirkus Reviews

2017-03-07
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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171181635
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/09/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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