_The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington_

LEONORA CARRINGTON (1917-2011) was a painter as well as a writer. Born in England, she lived the larger part of her life in Mexico, and was for a few years in a relationship with Max Ernst, the surrealist. The book contains twenty-five stories, most quite brief, three of them not published before. Thirteen were originally written in French, two in Spanish. About half date from the late 1930s and early 1940s, the time of her involvement with Ernst.

Generally, these stories could be described as fairy tales, but fairy tales before their Victorian domestication. Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber might be a useful point of comparison, but Carrington's stories are a little stranger and fiercer and crueler (especially about intra-familial relations) than even Carter's, while all the time maintaining a calm, imperturbable sangfroid.

Surreal touches abound. The narrator of "The Three Hunters" is resting in a forest when "a heavy object fell on my stomach. It was a dead rabbit, blood running from its mouth." Moments later a man, "about ninety," lands beside her:

He was wearing a hunting jacket the color of Damascus rose, a bright green hat with orange plumes, and very long black boots trimmed with summer flowers. He wore no trousers. He looked at the rabbit with interest.

I kept thinking a set of illustrations from Edward Gorey would be just about perfect. His subtle whimsy was just about the same shade of dark as Carrington's (bruise-purple, ochre at the edges), he had the same knowingly antique air, and he had a gift for the macabre.