There is a very insightful introduction to my copy of Nights at the Circus (Vintage edition) by Sarah Waters which helped set this strange, off-the-wall book in context. The novel is very well written but it takes you on a totally unbelievable journey.
The central character is Fevvers, an orphan baby, abandonned outside a Victorian brothel who grows to develop wings. She is an object of curiosity and wonder so people pay to see her, but also an object of desire for a variety of rich men including, it is rumoured , the Prince of Wales. At the beginning of the novel an American reporter gains admitance to her dressing room at a theatre and she tells him the story of her early life. From here the story moves to a circus building in St Petersburg and finally into the frozen wilderness of Siberia.
The book is peopled with many exotic characters, including chimps that can read, a pig that can spell and a concert pianist who perfoms in a cage full of tigers. Just as Fevvars can soar unaided up to a trapeze so the reader's feet are never on the ground for long. The world of this circus is definitley not of this world but is rich with Angela Carter's inventiveness.
Sarah Waters writes, " it is a tribute to Carter's skill as a novelist that her characters can inhabit this gloriously artifical universe and yet remain so emotionally compelling and physically convincing."
If you like good writing, magical realism and the picaresque, then this is the book for you.
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