Book Review: "The Passion of New Eve" by Angela Carter

A friend of mine from the past once convinced me to read (and then reread) The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, which was very enjoyable through my teen years. I didn't end up reading too many more books by this author though until I was in my early 20s and now, in my 30s, I am currently trying to work my way through as many Virago Modern Classics as possible. One of the books that kept popping up as a recommendation was The Passion of New Eve in which I have constantly been told is a description of New York which is to die for. Needless to say, I died over and over again. These descriptions were not just words, they were entire worlds - complete metaphors and horrific, graphic and terrifying as I imagined it. We are most definitely plunged into the City of Dreadful Night. A very different New York than what we are told indeed.

So this book starts with Evelyn who is watching a classic Hollywood starlet called Tristessa (who seems to be an amalgamation of Monroe and Dietrich or something). But what we see through this observation and chat we have with the protagonist is that he is longing for difference of place and person. Rather, that Tristessa is a symbol of this idea. It isn't an idealised lifestyle and it's not quite the American Dream - it is simply a movement, something that seems more freeing than the present. And so, with this our narrator moves to New York in search of it. Tristessa and New York go hand-in-hand in the narrator's mind - they are both something that has been manipulated. The narrator's New York is far different to the actual experience as not everything is shiny and new with the scent of success in the air. Angela Carter's quick shove from fantasy to reality is always something to be admired. When we practically get not 'carried' but pushed across the threshold where the façade starts to crack and peel away might be fast and violent, but our narrator must now adapt or die. New York is not what it seems.

On the blurb, it is called a "City of Dreadful Night" which is in many ways true. The atmospheric descriptions that we experience, oh dear god I could feel them in my bones whilst reading them. These are perhaps some of the best examples of descriptive and atmospheric writing I have read this year. New York is not just tarnished by black and grey, completed with the wreck of graffiti and the horrors of petty and violent crime, but there are warped metaphors around every corner. The one I really enjoyed was when a blonde woman witnesses a bunch of rats reduce a dog to a skeleton in only a few minutes. She screams, the whole thing happens but then it is almost nothing - as if everyone just moves on to the next thing. For a moment, everything stopped and the outsider was torn apart, ripped along its seems. It is not Mickey Mouse, it is the large sewer rats of New York, the size of a small puppy. They are the reality and the dog is the outsider. Of course our narrator wonders about whether this will happen to him if he dares to get too close to the reality of this New York he lives in.

As we move through the book we see our narrator become more accustomed to being a woman yes, and she becomes Eve. But we also see the abusive relationships there are, a kind of anger through sexual contact. We also see the way in which fear is used by and against the protagonist, death is witnessed and hangs about in a lingering scent. The bodies of rats shot in the hallways of New York apartment blocks cover the corridor in a stench that is understated as decay.

If there is any book I would recommend for reading atmospheric writing this year it would definitely be this one. Angela Carter always writes well but this is completely out there - I definitely wasn't expecting it. The people are raw and individual, the places are dirty and grimy and it isn't even presented as the 'underground' parts of the city. This is just what it is. This is what it is when everything is stripped away and only reality is left.