Angela Carter's explosive mix of sex, violence and mythology certainly had an impact on club members.
Tyneside Book Club members couldn't help but react in some way to the March choice. Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve certainly isn't for the fainthearted. Its sexual politics - with a focus on gender fluidity - seem well in advance of its 1977 publication date.
Comparatively short at fewer than 200 pages, it still has plenty packed into it. Members fond the prose vivid, but with a plot that went beyond mere eccentricity, to being positively bonkers in the view of some members. There were some wild acts of imagination, but it was also to hard to follow and comprehend at times.
The first section sees Evelyn living as a man in a dystopian New York where the rats are large enough to consume the local dogs. His behaviour is pretty appalling but payback is coming when he is abducted and transformed into Eve by a many-breasted goddess, and begins life as a woman.
When he is abducted again by renegade Zero - based it seems in part on Charles Manson - Eve is subjected to horrific sexual violence, before becoming involved in a mission to track down Tristessa - the movie femme fatale that obsessed him/her. But Tristessa's gender identity also proves to be far from straightforward. And the encounter is a far from happy one.
There are a lot of mythological references scattered throughout the book, but members felt many of them passed them by, therefore limiting its appeal to the the general reader. Some felt the novel was too self-consciously "clever". You had to have a strong stomach too for the repeated sexual violence and obsession with bodily functions.
Nevertheless, there was plenty to discuss in a novel that was nothing if not original.
Comparatively short at fewer than 200 pages, it still has plenty packed into it. Members fond the prose vivid, but with a plot that went beyond mere eccentricity, to being positively bonkers in the view of some members. There were some wild acts of imagination, but it was also to hard to follow and comprehend at times.
The first section sees Evelyn living as a man in a dystopian New York where the rats are large enough to consume the local dogs. His behaviour is pretty appalling but payback is coming when he is abducted and transformed into Eve by a many-breasted goddess, and begins life as a woman.
When he is abducted again by renegade Zero - based it seems in part on Charles Manson - Eve is subjected to horrific sexual violence, before becoming involved in a mission to track down Tristessa - the movie femme fatale that obsessed him/her. But Tristessa's gender identity also proves to be far from straightforward. And the encounter is a far from happy one.
There are a lot of mythological references scattered throughout the book, but members felt many of them passed them by, therefore limiting its appeal to the the general reader. Some felt the novel was too self-consciously "clever". You had to have a strong stomach too for the repeated sexual violence and obsession with bodily functions.
Nevertheless, there was plenty to discuss in a novel that was nothing if not original.
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