surreal feminist fable
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"The Passion Of New Eve" is a wild and dangerous ride through aspects of human experience that can be explored only via the over-the-top, surrealistic methods Angela Carter is using.
She is taking a hard look at issues of sexual identity, and by setting her story in a future U.S.A. that is rapidly disintegrating, and descending into all-out civil war, she indicates the often violent and arbitrary way sexual and social roles are created and changed.
The point of the novel seems to be that nature will always defeat the power plays of men, but will offer women strength only - not sympathy. The utterly satisfying section towards the end where Eve is re-born and then expelled from "Eden" underscores this.
A brilliant, deeply challenging book, recommended to readers who like to be broadened.
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Infuriating read
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This started off very well, with lots of energy and excitement (hence the 2 star rating), even though some of the scenes were quite gut-wrenching. However, I'm afraid I soon got bored with the plot and the characters (I didn't warm to any of them), especially after Evelyn's little operation(!) and I have to admit to skipping the last quarter of the book and not really caring what happened. Not one I'd recommend to anyone, I think.
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Weird and wonderful.
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This novel is pure fantasy and the plot very wacky. It tells the story of an Englishman during some very interesting developments in his life including a forced sex change. While this is my least favourite of Angela Carter's books it is still fasinating to read. The events are incredulous but that's half the fun.
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Some like to analyse it, others like to read it!
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One of the sad consequences of Angela Carter's political stance is that her work will be read under the analytical microscope, just as I read this book the first time round. Regardless of any such speculative dissection, it is a beautiful, warm, subtly erotic story and in a league of its own. It is more likely to appeal to the unselfconscious, more adventurous reader.
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Passionately Postmodern!
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Angela Carter's novel Passion of New Eve is an intelligent discourse centred around ideas of gender as a performance and gender assignment. By the end of the novel names and gender roles are so obscured and blurry that they become obsolete, the 'act' of 'being' is nothing more than a performance like that of the famous actress. Tristessa is the ultimate figure of feminine masochism, but isn't all that she seems, neither is Englishman Evelyn who later becomes Eve - Mother's mythic vision of the ultimate woman modelled on the playboy centrefold...
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