the complete stories of leonora carrington

The result of this dark and particular fascination reads like a demented hybrid of Lovecraft and the Redwall series: 'A plump fat chicken with stuffing made of brains and the livers of thrushes, truffles, crushed sweet almonds, rose conserve with a few drops of some divine liqueur. In the introduction, Kathryn Davis writes that Carrington was very focused on stories of eating or being eaten, and once cut hair from a houseguest she disliked and served it to him in an omelet the next morning.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Down Below Author Leonora Carrington A woman undresses down to her skeleton a witch gives birth to a litter of boars and kills all but the one that most resembles its father, a monstrous sister kills the maid and flees while her captor and her captor's lover hold an orgy in the middle of a feast - all in Carrington's stripped-down, relatively abstract language.Īnd speaking of feasts, one of the most pleasurable and disturbing recurring themes in these stories is that of consumption. These stories have the distinct affect of fairy tales - intuitive logic that carries the reader from one moment to the next without a sense of cause-and-effect, the furthest distance from psychological realism as possible.

These stories have the distinct affect of fairy tales - intuitive logic that carries the reader from one moment to the next without a sense of cause-and-effect. It takes a particular type of reader to appreciate this work, a particular love of absurdity and beauty and ugliness and the way they often occupy the same surreal space. She creates hunters who are punished by God for farting in church, horses inviting passersby to play games in the House of Fear, and a hyena who takes a debutante's place at her own ball.Ĭarrington effortlessly slips from humor to horror in a single sentence, and while she describes increasingly odd, disturbing, and at times nearly indescribable scenarios, she does so with the dry, droll confidence of a diner reading off a menu. Now, one more joins that list: the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, whose Complete Stories has just been published, to coincide with the re-release of her memoir Down Below.Ĭomplete Stories, a collection of Carrington's published and unpublished short stories - many newly translated from their original French and Spanish - is a terrific introduction to her bizarre, dreamlike worlds.

The last few years have seen a bumper crop of published works by and biographies of many mid-20th century female writers: Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Lucia Berlin, Clarice Lispector - all reaching new generations of readers. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington Author Leonora Carrington

The complete stories of leonora carrington