I read Angela Carter, I imagine her as the literary grandmother to someone like sitelinkKelly Link, There's an eccentric tone of fantasy, an unabashed outlandishness and roguish wordplay there's a thread of challenge running through the narrative, sometimes cleverly concealed and sometimes out in front like so much gaudy embroidery.
Carter is a master storyteller with a remarkable gift for language and a willingness to take risks on any front,
But all of the above I already knew from my introduction to Carter, her short story "The Loves of Lady Purple" check it out in sitelinkWayward Girls and Wicked Women.
Nights at the Circus goes beyond the expectations set by "The Loves of Lady Purple", It is more fantastic, more surreal, more political, more challenging, more graphic, and though more forceful also much more subtle, The traveling circus of Colonel Kearney provides such a splendid backdrop for Angela Carter's handiwork that I would not be at all surprised if this is her finest novel.
The notion of the circus opens up every possibility for herliterate monkeys taking over their own care and negotiating their own compensation, a fortunetelling pig, abject and sociopathic alcoholic clowns.
. . And most of that despite providing its own commentary seems on the surface to primarily help provide color to a narrative that focuses on a struggle to reconcile independence/individuality with the desire to mate and bond with others.
Carter cleverly leads the reader along her characters' paths via totems and proxies, and accelerates us through their worlds in crisis when those totems become threatened and lost.
This is one novel that is as brilliant as it is lyrical,
Again, as of this writing, I've only read this novel and one short story, Though I may perhaps be biased by the strength of the recommendation that J, M. made when suggesting the werk in the first place,
Not to mention the thorough deconstruction of clowning,
See also:
sitelinkGraham Joyce's topfairy fictions Verdict: Three rings of fractured fairy tales, barely believable characters and fables fallen through the looking glass.
Nights at the Circus is too clever by half, too bad it knows it,
Nights at the Circus came to me immediately recommended, which is to say the girl at Waterstones gushed over when I brought it to the counter.
Generally I do not care for it when shop staff accost me with unsolicited conversation because I am, to use the medical terminology, “painfully awkward.
” I dont mind so much at bookstores through, because with super heroes and video games long gone mainstream, paperbacks are the last refuge of the true nerd and thus I felt kinship.
I paid heed to Waterstones girl and dutifully saved Nights at the Circus as a reward for completing less fun classics, After The Bell Jar I knew that time had come,
Nights at the Circus is about Fevvers as in Feathers spelled cockney, a statuesque grotesque of a woman whose literal claim to fame rests in the functional wings growing
out of her back.
The book begins with American reporter Jack interviewing Fevvers and her cohort Lizzie for his series on great big humbugs, Fevvers has just completed a triumphant circuit of Europe and now, after returning to home sweet London, she plan to set out with a circus run by Colonel Kearney, an OTT allegory of the capitalist dream who will no doubt go in to star in many a North Korean propaganda poster.
First through, she and Lizzie, for the benefit of a captivated Jack, relate her life story thus far, It is action packed, reference jammed, titillating, eerie and delightful,
In Part II the action has shifted to St, Petersburg, stage one of the transSiberian circus, Jack has come along as a clown because he is now in love, apparently, We meet the moribund clowns, the cowardly strong man, her highness the tigertamer, the chimpanzees of superior intellect and the deceptively interesting chimp mans wife.
Also Colonel Kearneys psychic pig, It is all good fun for a while but then things begin to go wrong and I begin to wonder where we are going with all of this.
The answer comes in Part III and it is Siberia, Disaster strikes the circus. Lesbian relationships multiply at alarming rates, Jack and Fevvers are separated and everyone goes through a spiritual awakening before coming back together for a happy ending, Its not as interesting as it sounds,
I wrestled with my feelings on this book for a long time, I found my opinion locked up in a sort of logical conundrum, Nights at the Circus clearly falls smack dab into the definition of magic realism and magic realism is personally undeniably superior to realism in the same way that a chocolate covered raisin is superior to a nude shrivelled grape.
Were still dealing in the real world with real issues and real feelings etc but with the inclusion of literate primates and mirrordwelling tigers to liven things up.
This chain of reasoning made sense to me and yet I could not swallow it, It took some time to build to this, but Im just going to have to admit it I did not like this book very much.
I ought to, It ticked my boxes. I would have recommended it to myself, It just never sat right with me, I still feel guilt for feeling these feelings so Im going to sell Nights at the Circus a bit more before revealing my qualms.
It is an exciting book, The story is more along the lines of vignettes strung together, little or short stories if you will, or maybe a collection of fairy tales is closer the mark.
Your attention is constantly being caught and recaught by new narrative threads and aptly circuslike imagery surrounding Wonderland parables,
I liked the idea of Fevvers, Scratchingfoot myself I like to see a big girl get the boy, Also it never got too vulgar or loose with life though the opportunities abounded, I hold my literature to a high moral standard and, though accommodating of necessary nastiness, I frown on gratuitousity for its own sake, I had no cause for frown here, Certainly high marks all around for originality, I cant bear to put you off this book too much, If you stumble across it, give it a try, If nothing else it passes the time like a dream,
And yet it was not for me, On a surface level I wasnt crazy for the progression of the book, It started strong, the middle was ripe for a splendid climax and conclusion but instead it all sort of petered out with a rather staid zenlike finding of self.
And the root of the matter though, was that this novel spent too much time winking at me and this made it impossible to simply enjoy.
This is a smart book, Carter is a smart lady and by golly you are going to be reminded of it, Thinly veiled allegories abound which would be fine if they didnt all have signs on them saying thinly veiled allegory, Im not saying that you are babied through the symbolism, its more a fact of being constantly jarred out of the narrative by characters proclaiming themselves to be unreliable narrators etc.
As you read you are plainly told to examine the relationship between listener, teller and tale, A parade of literary devices are marched in front of you while Fevvers gleefully discusses each one in Latin, Maybe this appeals to you, all the better, but for me it was exhausting and worse, it made me self conscious, “I am not just a book!” proclaims Nights at the Circus, “I am a discourse between author and reader!” This is too much pressure for me.
It is audience participation and I cannot relax and enjoy the show if Im worried about whether Im enjoying it right, When I finished, the effect was that Nights at the Circus left on me an impression of disingenuousness, Meticulously engineered and too clever by half it never let me enter into it no questions asked, For all the lights and colours and plots and characters it remains cold and distant, Like a snooty Discworld.
And there you have it, Im not sure if feeling distained by a novel is a rational reason for giving itout of five but Ive been comfortably irrational for years now so its a risk Im willing to take.
Id assign it if I ever taught high school literature, Knock those smartalec kids down a peg or two,
.