The Geek Dungeon
After the success of 2019’s Little Women, Greta Gerwig’s sublime adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s most iconic novel, it seemed we would not receive another literary adaptation that would meet the same heights of innocence, pathos and aesthetically gorgeous cinematography – but it seems debut director Autumn de Wilde had other ideas.
Louisa May Alcott’s iconic novel, Little Women, is a book that is ultimately hard to sum up in one sentence. Overall the novel follows a group of four sisters who face the various obstacles of life – falling in love, war, life and even death. It is a novel that sees the world through the eyes of young girls, slowly blooming into the little women they are destined to become. And being such a loved work of American literature, the book has seen several film adaptations over the centuries, each with their strengths and weaknesses, but they all shared one common thing – they told the story from beginning to end.
When it comes to picking an author that I can call truly inspirational, and by extension, a true favourite, only one name ever seems to come to my mind. And her name is Angela Carter.
Born in 1940 (supposedly while the Dunkirk evacuations were taking place), Angela Olive Stalker would one day grow up to become one of Britain’s most significant and prolific writers. In her unfortunately short life time, Angela would go on to write nine superb novels, four collections of short stories, a smattering of literary essays, television screenplays, a handful of poems, radio plays, pages upon pages of journalistic articles and even the script for a never realised opera. In only fifty-one years on this planet, Angela Carter was able to leave her mark upon the heavily patriarchal face of the literary world, pulling it, kicking and screaming into the modern age.