A Reminder of Magic

There’s a wonderful article in today’s Observer. It’s by Susannah Clapp, and it’s reminiscences about her friend Angela Carter.

Carter was a brilliant novelist who died of lung cancer ten years ago at the young age of 51. As Clapp says:

She was 10 years too old and entirely too female to be mentioned routinely alongside Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan as being a young pillar of British fiction. She was 20 years too young to belong to what she considered the “alternative pantheon” of Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark in the 40s. 

I see I have twenty-two of her books in my library, a couple in multiple editions. Time to go back and re-read them, I think. Meanwhile, if you’ve never heard of Angela Carter, do go and read the article, and then get one of her books: I suggest either Nights at the Circus or Wise Children.