The feeling of reading something for the first time that you know you would read countless more times in your life is a special kind of magic.

Surrealism has been by big hyperfixation for the end of the year and Leonora Carrington has been a wonderful way in, remaining a true favourite, alongside her fellow of las tres brujas, Remedios Varo (I still need to dive into the work of Kati Horna). From the moment I saw my food friend add Carrington's novel, The Hearing Trumpet, to their TBR a spell was cast on me that upon reading said novel a pact sealed was sealed in earwax.

I've been meaning to get to this collection for a while and I'm so glad I finally pulled with trigger on an Audible Credit last night. The stories are so strange and magical-so filled with whimsy and emotion and wonder-reading them has been like a religious experience. The narration by Justine Eyre is absolutely fantastic.

Throughout these stories young women seek freedom among horses, hyenas, and questionable holy figures and orders. Many are extremely short bizarre fairytales. All are wondrous.

I am in love with Surrealism and adore the written forms as much, if not more than the visual arts, but I am truly besotted with las tres brujas and the angels of anarchy of which Carrington is a leading figure. ( )

Weird and wonderful. These stories feel like surreal dreams of dark fairy tales. Carrington's tales are imaginative, funny, disturbing, and sprinkled with some whimsically symbolic social commentary regarding class and society that sadly is as applicable today as it was in the 1930s. I enjoy absurd aesthetics, but I also love powerfully meaningful stories - this book has both. ( )

This collection of stories is easily the weirdest book I have ever read. Leonora Carrington was long associated with the painter Max Ernst. Fittingly, her stories are classified as surrealistic fiction and merge the boundaries between people and animals. Despite the weirdness, they are very engrossing and several remain with you for a long while after the book is finished. ( )

The Complete Stories of Leonara Carrington
by Leonara Carrington
Translated from French by Katherine Talbot
Translated from Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan
2017
Dorothy, a publishing project
5.0/5.0

Carringtons novels have come to epitomize surrealism,and really there is no other way to explain this brilliant, strange and absorbing stories. This includes all her short stories, some a bit autobiographical, but all of them haunting. I first found her through her surreal art work. Amazing.

Favorites include:

The Debutante

A Man In Love

The Three Hunters

White Rabbits ( )

Some of the most remarkable short stories I've ever read: surrealistic fairy tales that are atmospheric, eerie, and sublime. The images are fantastic, word-paintings of strange worlds where animals speak, the unspeakable is eaten, and characters transform from people, to animals, to corpses and other inanimate objects. A feast to be sipped and savored! ( )