Throughout [Dinesen's tales] runs a theme of common humanity surrendered in exchange for something else—pride? power? above all for the ability to turn life, with its muddle and pain, into art—exquisite where life is confused, heartless where life is passionate. (p. 15)

In Carnival and in The Angelic Avengers … we have the sweepings of Dinesen's work: the former made up chiefly of stories she discarded as not good enough for publication, the latter an "entertainment" written under a pseudonym during her time in Nazi-occupied Denmark…. [For] those who find the ruthlessness of her more serious work oppressive, The Angelic Avengers is a delightful romp, a Daphne du Maurier novel rewritten by Hans Andersen. The sultry presence of evil is there, as usual…. There is a touch of voodoo, a pact with Beelzebub, and some cannibalism; it is a romp nevertheless, for virtue triumphs, the charity of a virgin exorcises evil…. More seriously, the fact that it moves with pace and feeling, unlike some of Dinesen's more ambitious work, might be because she found herself happy with a fable about the redemption of the corrupt, i.e., the syphilitic [Dinesen suffered from syphilis]. The effect of her illness on her view of the writer as a dedicated being, yet cut off from common humanity, surely cannot be overestimated.

Carnival is chiefly for the Dinesen devotee, since most of the stories in it were rejected by the fastidious author. The usual ingredients are there, but often without the imaginative fusion of her best stories. The first two, however, written in Danish before she married, are interesting in showing that her early attempts at writing were fully in the vein of her later work: both are lightweight, ironic fables with the barest touch of cruelty. (pp. 16-17)

Will Blixen/Dinesen … come to be known more for her life than for her works? Of the books, Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, the one with its extreme artifice and the other with its directness, will probably last the longest. But the pattern of her life is at least as remarkable a creation…. The survivor—quod fecit, fecit—is sometimes more frightening than the suicide. (pp. 17-18)