The Magic Toyshop

Description

Cover design by Jacqueline Groag This crazy world whirled about her, men and women dwarfed by toys and puppets, where even the birds were mechanical and the few human figures went masked . . . She was in the night again, and the doll was herself One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother s wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave her rural home, she is sent to London to live with relatives she has never met: gentle Aunt Margaret, mute since her wedding day; and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn. Brooding over all is Uncle Philip, who loves only the puppets he creates in his workshop, which are life-sized - and uncannily life-like.

Angela Carter (1940-1992) is one of Britain's most original and disturbing writers. THE MAGIC TOYSHOP won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1969 and SEVERAL PERCEPTIONS won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1968.

The boldest of English women writers' Lorna Sage 'Her writing is pyrotechnic - fuelled with ideas, packed with images and spangling the night with her starry language' Observer