Saints and Strangers (King Penguin)
Carter's short stories demand a certain amount of complicity; they echo and reverberate for the reader who has some knowledge of Edgar Allan Poe, of Baudelaire, of Lizzie Borden, of myth and folktale. In "The Fall River Axe Murders" the reader must remember that Lizzie Borden murdered her father and stepmother. Carter's story, which covers Lizzie's life in the few weeks preceding her bloody act, meticulously reproduces life in Fall River: the clothes Lizzie wore, the house she lived in, relationships in the doomed family. "The Kiss" takes us to Samarkand and the myth of Tamburlaine and his wife; "Peter and the Wolf" deals in an original way with the folktale of a human child raised by wolves. Carter's smooth, silky stories are rich with sensuous detail. The reader feels the heat, sees the fabric of clothes, walks the streets of the cities Carter recreates. Recommended. Marcia Tager, Tenafly,Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.