# The Magic Toyshop By Angela Carter, 1967 ★★★★☆ First read in November 2022 --- What a wonderful, wonderful writing style. I kept thinking all throughout that I would like to live my life the way this book is written. I don't know how to describe it, other than maybe.. Unapologetic. Beautiful writing, hilarious at times. I also loved her images, the way she sees things: - “his eyes were no colour, like a rainy day" or "tonight his eyes were the no-colour of old newspapers” - “.. mounds of glowing oranges, trapped little winter suns.” - “far away, though the mist, the blur of the city deepened like a sooty thumbprint” ## Quotes I liked "'My feet are wet,' said Melanie. 'Perhaps I shall catch a cold.' Which will turn into pneumonia and I shall die and nobody will care. Pg. 57 - “Don’t,” said Melanie sternly to herself, “cry because of the state of their bathroom.” Powerful segment that one with this quote. So relatable. There are so many times, countless times, when we feel the rush of self-pity and tears start filling our eyes and a hard lump forms in our throats. And we wrap up our whole self all around our self and we become one huge suffering blob. Don’t. Don’t cry because of the state of their bathroom. Their cold dirty bathroom making the bathroom you lost look warm and clean in retrospect, reminding yourself you’re an orphan, your parents died, you’re in a strange place. Don’t let this be a reminder of your misery. Don’t cry over the state of their bathroom. "frail like a pressed flower"  "far away, though the mist, the blur of the city deepened like a sooty thumbprint"  Pg.161 "The afternoon stifled her. Victoria hit her saucepan and chanted snatches of song and Aunt Margaret stroked her little head lovingly. They were so happy together. Melanie's headache grew worse. She slipped up to her room but Francie was playing slow airs, phrases of music padded about her on small, soft, melancholy feet and she thought her heart was breaking. She did not know what do to with herself. She picked the dead yellow leaves of the geranium and crumbled them to fragrant dust between her fingers."  "She stared at her hand. Four fingers and a thumb. Five nails. =="This is my hand. Mine. But what is it for?' she thought. "What does it mean?== "Her hand seemed wonderful and surprising, an object which did not belong to her and of which she did not know the use. The fingers were people, the members of a family. The thumb the father, short and thick-set, probably a Northcountryman, with flat, assertive vowels in his speech, and the forefinger the mother, a tall, willowy lady, of middle-class origins, who said: 'dahling' frequently and ate dessert oranges with a knife and fork. Had he married above his station, in the flush of self-made money? He had the bluff, upright stance of a man who has made his own way in the world. And three fine children, two full grown, a big boy and girl, and one just coming into its teens. She flexed her hand, and, obligingly, the family performed a brief dance for her. Then she was horrified. 'I must be going crazy!' In this crazy house, as Finn said he would, she, too, was going mad. She wrapped up her head in the curtains so as not to hear Francie playing and not see the room darken as it approached tomorrow. She felt the round world spinning towards the new day and carrying her, infinitely small, furious, reluctant, with it. She saw herself, minute, standing on the schoolroom globe of the world and it turning in vast, silent space and once again felt she was teetering on the edge of sanity. But did people have nervous breakdowns at fifteen going on sixteen? Well, she must be the first, unique. There was a swan over her head, dangling there like the sword of Damocles, following her wherever, insignificant as dust, she was blown by cross currents of fearful winds. 'Oh, I must not be afraid of the swan. It is all charades." But it was not precisely the swan of which she was afraid but of giving herself to the swan. Pg 184 "His lips opened on all his teeth like a broken wall.