Angela Carter is a writer who tends to elicit strong responses from people. In my experience, she is literary Marmite: you either love her books with a burning passion, or you hate her writing and think that she should never have been allowed near a typewriter for the sanity of readers everywhere. However, when I picked up a copy of The Magic Toyshop at the tender age of 15, it started a love affair that has lasted my whole reading life to date, and Carter is nothing if not a fountain of (slightly… specialist) wisdom. So here are five lessons that I have learned from Angela Carter:

There are few problems in life that can’t be solved with the strategic use of sex

Sex is never just sex in a Carter novel: it is the most powerful weapon known to man, and it is often used accordingly. When it comes to getting what you want, whether that’s not being eaten by a wolf or attempting to force your niece to act in a play, in a book by Carter sex is generally the way to go about it.

Men are fundamentally beasts (but women love them anyway)

Men are animals in Carter novels. Sometimes literally. Okay, so they might have their bright moments, their scarily clever manipulative bastard moments, but they are slaves to their… baser urges. However, Carter’s women seem to recognise this and accept it, even like it, becoming a bit animal themselves in the process (‘The Tiger’s Bride’, anyone?). Carter’s romantic relationships are never straightforward and are often as multi-faceted and twisted as the characters themselves, but her men are always a bit on the beastly side.

If things first appear to be freaky and weird, you can safely assume they will turn out to be 15 times worse.

Carter has a talent for presenting you with a weird, twisted situation… and making it so much worse than you could have imagined before the book is out. Hidden bodies, incestuous siblings, literal and figurative monsters, men who are ‘hairy on the inside’: nothing is off limits. What we as readers can take away from this is if it looks bad at the outset, then turn tail and run, girl. Turn tail and run.

Just because a girl is young does not mean she isn’t fierce

Many a man has come to a sticky (ahem) end in a Carter novel for underestimating the strength and sometimes just downright duplicity of a teenage girl. Just because a girl’s young doesn’t mean you can just walk all over her, and even if you appear to be getting what you want, I’d watch out for what she’s doing when your back is turned…

‘If in doubt, freak ’em out’

Okay, okay, this isn’t actually Angela Carter, it’s Sharon Needles, but the same still applies. When you are looking at your short story the length of an A4 page and thinking ‘is necrophilia, incest, sadomasochism AND peadophelia too much?’ take Angela’s word for it that no, no it is not. Carter never shied away from using good old shock factor in her work, and it is all the better for it. There is something about the imagery of a cigar as ‘fat as a baby’s arm’ that just sticks. Trust me, you will traumatise A Level English students everywhere, but there will be at least one 16 year old girl in that class that will love you for it. The rest of them are weak.

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So that’s it! Five lessons I have taken away from Carter novels. Take these words of wisdom and take them out into the world, but I accept no responsibility for any wolf men harmed in the process…