I really enjoy Angela Carter’s short stories – The Bloody Chamber is a collection I’ve read and held onto for decades, listing it among my perennial favourites. But I don’t think I’m such a fan of her novels. The strengths of her writing are certainly on display in the longer works, but I found, at least with The Magic Toyshop, that the majority of the book had a languorous pace, but the final took place at a gallop with too much rushed or left unsaid. Although it was set in London in the 1950s, the story felt and was more suited to taking place in the 1850s and could have been any city or town in the world (the seeming lack of post-war rationing didn’t help).