The Passion of New Eve

Title: The Passion of New Eve
Author: Angela Carter
Published: Originally in 1977
Genre: Magic realism
Pages: 191


I don't remember what it was that first got me interested in this book, enough to buy a used copy, but damn, it has been a good long while since the last book that made me stop reading and say What the fuck? this often. (Was that sentence complicated enough?) 

Young Evelyn moves from his home in England to New York, to take up a position as an English professor. As soon as he reaches the big city, the reader and Evelyn both learn that the USA is in the grips of a war between... pretty much everyone. He has no job left, and barely dares to leave his small flat for food in the fear of being killed on the way to the corner shop. On one such brave excursion, he meets a young erotic dancer, Leilah, and abandons what's left of his little life to follow her. When things turn sour, he escapes the city for the desert, and that's when things go really weird.

I didn't know what I was getting into as I started the book, and ended up with heaps of everything. Dystopia, humour, dark satire, post-feminism, crazy cults, gender stuff... the book indeed made me go WTF plenty of times, and almost as many times I thought about not finishing it, but heck, I'm glad I did. What a wild ride.


   And she regarded me benignly but with implicit ferocity; I stammered a little but no words came for she was of Leilah's colour and I was full of shame. She shrugged her immense shoulders.
   "Well... one day, you'll discover that sexuality is a unity manifested in different structures and it's a hard thing, in these alienated times, to tell what is what and what is not. Ah, Evelyn, I've no quarrel with you just because you're a man! I think your pretty little virility is just darling, harmless as a dove, such a delight! A lovely toy for a young girl... but are you sure you get the best use of it in the shape you are?" 
   What could she mean? Her face, dark as an eclipse of the moon, is lowered over me with giantesque solitude; her hot, close breath basts me, I whimper.