Nights At The Circus - Angela Carter

Nights at the Circus is the story of Sophie Fevvers, a woman who was born with the wings of a swan. Set at the star of the 20th Century, Fevvers is a star in the circus, famous throughout Europe and performing for kings and emperors. A journalist, Jack Walser, is writing a feature on Fevvers, and follows her from London to Russia and through the Siberian wilderness, and experiences strange and unexplainable happenings along the way.

The story is mainly about Fevvers, and her background. She was raised in a brothel, lived in a sort of house of horrors, then an ice cream parlour and finally she joined the circus. She met many eccentrics through her life, from dangerous men who fetishized her wings, to other outcasts with deformities (such as the 4 eyed woman in the house of horrors), and then the utterly weird characters in the circus. Being exposed to dangerous men throughout her whole life, she learnt to stand up for herself, and became a hardened woman by the time this story starts. There's a sense of mystery running through this plot- it isn't clear if Fevvers is the real deal or a hoax. We're told her origins, but only her unreliable version. Her adoptive mother seems to be capable of magic too, but her abilities are never explained, just used sporadically through the book. This all adds up to a really weird atmosphere, where the book has one foot in the real world, but one foot in fantasy, so absolutely anything can and will happen.

This story appears to be mostly a character study of Fevvers, but it's more about the cyclone of madness going on around her. This book is more of a string of events than a plot driven story, and the events themselves are absolutely surreal. There's murderous clowns, hermits who are secretly musical geniuses, chimpanzees who are master negotiators to name a few. Tigers turn into broken mirrors, trains are shrunk into snow globes and time stands still. This book, being part of the magical realism trend of the late 20th century, plods along in reality then suddenly throws something totally bizarre at the reader. It makes for a unique and at times very funny book.

Carter has a wide range of themes and influences on display here. Theres a lot of interpretations of this book out there - it's mostly thought of as being an inverted fairy tale, instead of a prince charming we have a big, foul mouthed Cockney woman. There's also feminist themes running through this - lots of independent & sex positive women, which isn't common in books set in Victorian times. 

This was a great book, on the surface it's funny and interesting enough, but it also drops enough subtleties and symbolism to give you something to think about long after you've finished it.