num_pages: 200
description: One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother's wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the comfortable home of her childhood, she is sent to London to live with relatives she never met: Aunt Margaret, beautiful and speechless, and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn, who kisses Melanie in the ruins of the pleasure garden. And brooding Uncle Philip loves only the life-sized wooden puppets he creates in his toyshops. The classic gothic novel established Angela Carter as one of our most imaginative writers and augurs the themes of her later creative works. "Beneath its contemporary surface, this novel shimmers with blurred echoes—from Lewis Carroll, from 'Giselle' and 'Coppelia,' Harlequin and Punch… It leave behind it a flavor, pungent and unsettling" —The New York Times Book Review
language: English
title: The Magic Toyshop
titlecomplete: The Magic Toyshop
genres: 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Novels, Gothic, Horror, Fantasy, Classics, British Literature, Fiction, Magical Realism
ratings_count: 11656
awards: awardedAt: -63129600000
name: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
publisher: Penguin Books