Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories

"It’s a collection of her short stories. Reading Angela Carter for the first time was a revelation to me. I’d never read anything like that–just spellbinding use of language. Like all the other books I’ve selected it brings the most beautiful pictures to mind. As an illustrator I feel I crave this–other people’s ideas. With just a few words they can conjure whole worlds. So, it’s very inspiring for me to read work like this. I wouldn’t necessarily illustrate these but am in awe of her skillful use of language."

"I absolutely love her last “Cinderella” – “Ashputtle or The Mother’s Ghost” [which first appeared in 1993, in American Ghosts and Old World Wonders ] – in which she takes the Grimms’ motif of the mother returning to help her daughter. She combs her hair and says ‘you’ve worn out my nails’ and says to her ‘now you’re strong and ready to go out into the world on your own’. And so she sends her into the world strong and happy. I think that’s a really beautiful story. Japan certainly did. She went there because she liked Japanese cinema. She liked the films of Akira Kurosawa, which were a blend of realism and fantasy and fairytale – so that was a strong pull on her. And she liked Japanese ghosts stories. In the 1960s there were more of those around – now they have the Studio Ghibli, of course, which is wonderful, but there was a rich scene in Carter’s time too. That’s what drew her there. And she loved Yukio Mishima, too. Someone told me that Carter did know “The Debutante” [ Carrington’s most famous short story; re-published in a new edition earlier this year]. It was discovered in her library. Carter came across Carrington through Surrealism, which was an important influence on her – French Surrealism was very much the milieu of her earlier work especially. It wasn’t so much the fairytale aspects of Carrington that drew Carter to her; I think it was the Surrealist coordinates of communism, sexual liberation, delinquency, foul-mouthedness, blasphemy. She was very interested in blasphemy as a method of shaking up thought. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Fairytale is good at that, too, because it’s part of looking at the unspeakable things that people do, perhaps using blasphemy to challenge and take down tyrants. I don’t think she was interested by Australia particularly, although she loved the birds – the parrots! The US, she went to to teach. At the time she was lucky enough to go there it was a different place. The Americans have always had a great cult of literature and specifically of the short story. That was important. There was a great interest in her work over there, which hadn’t yet happened in the UK. She never had an easy time in the UK. She never won a prize, or anything. Hugely renewed interest, yes, and very much in academe, too. It’s because she’s an absolutely extraordinarily good writer. People are recognizing it – her writing is just astonishingly lively, and rich, and her thought hasn’t aged. She’s very fresh and agile in her thinking. She was a tremendous freethinker in the best possible way. Logan is very imaginative and very fertile. She’s the kind of congenial spirit that one likes to be with as a reader. But her work is much gentler than Carter’s, much more tender and touching and poignant. Because she is a lesbian and many of her stories are allegories of lesbian love, she is very much what I was saying earlier: this is literature that creates a realm of understanding and mutual feeling that can build something. This may not explicitly be Logan’s intention – although I expect it is. A Portable Shelter is not a collection of fairytales but a novel with fairytales interpolated. It’s actually about telling fairytales to a baby, and creating a safe place for the baby in the process. There’s a kind of dystopian vision hanging over it, some kind of apocalypse coming. There’s a Noah’s Ark feel to it. And this couple has a baby and they are keeping it safe by telling these stories. Mitchison is a bit of a forgotten figure and yet she had a great spirit and led an amazing life. The best place to start with her is her play Kate Crackernuts , which she wrote for children to perform. It’s a traditional fairy tale – its name comes from the Scottish tradition. It’s the same story as Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”, except here it is a man who is saved from the goblins who would steal him away into the underworld. And although he loves being there with the fairies and the fairy queen, the woman who loves him back on earth fights, fights, fights the goblins and fairies to bring the earthling back to safety. Mitchison married a Scotsman and they lived on the beautiful Mull of Kintyre. And she had a Scottish nationalist period in her life and she fought for fishing rights and all manner of things. She came from the Oxford intelligentsia-aristocracy. Yes, I do, but the person who really thinks highly of Mitchison is Ali Smith. So I think in Scotland she does have a kind of aura, which she doesn’t have down South."