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kaazi's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
samneat's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
thinkspink's review against another edition
4.0
This book feels very luxurious, the language, characters and settings all mean you'll want to read this slowly. But it's very approachable, and you'll want to find out what happens to these guys. Even the incidental players have a full & rich backstory.
But it's the unique visions of circus life that make this book for me - especially Buffo the clown's final performance, in fact, my favourite sections coincided with every time those clowns appear.
The only possible downside is that despite Fevver's great character, she's possibly the least interesting part of the circus - I know I'd rather be watching those waltzing tigers, and studious chimps. A woman who may be half swan is almost humdrum by comparison!
But it's the unique visions of circus life that make this book for me - especially Buffo the clown's final performance, in fact, my favourite sections coincided with every time those clowns appear.
The only possible downside is that despite Fevver's great character, she's possibly the least interesting part of the circus - I know I'd rather be watching those waltzing tigers, and studious chimps. A woman who may be half swan is almost humdrum by comparison!
iarinas's review against another edition
2.0
Put me in a reading slump.
I liked the beginning but it took a very weird direction and seemed to derail from the original plot point. The way all non-american characters were described also felt very icky.
I liked the beginning but it took a very weird direction and seemed to derail from the original plot point. The way all non-american characters were described also felt very icky.
karionie's review against another edition
3.0
I liked, but didn't love this book. The language was lush and beautiful, but the voice was muddled and tended to ramble. You encounter a myriad of characters, from the intrinsic to the incidental, and you get back story on all of them. All. Of. Them. Have some backstory. Have some more backstory. Have some backstory on someone you're only meeting in the backstory of some minor character. So. Much. Backstory. *sigh* But it's worth a read for the vocabulary alone.
vikart's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
brighroosh's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this story! I usually refer to the "book" that I read, but this truly was a "story" that will stay with me for a long time. Angela Carter writes anachronistically, as if she was from the 1800's. I had to double check when the book was written, because surely it was authored a long time ago? The language and incidents revealed don't give away a hint of reference to the 1980's, when the book was written.
In other words, I was transported to a different time and place, one where fantastic things could have happened, like a woman born with wings!.
Fevvers, named for her feathers, is a no nonsense down to earth woman, who learns to "spread her wings" literally. I felt affection for her and many of the other characters, especially Walser, the journalist following her to the far reaches of the circus to write her story.
As the book neared the end, a type of wonderful absurdity manifests with each new encounter. Almost laughable, but plausible because I had become so subsumed by the ensuing plots.
Wonderful book!
In other words, I was transported to a different time and place, one where fantastic things could have happened, like a woman born with wings!.
Fevvers, named for her feathers, is a no nonsense down to earth woman, who learns to "spread her wings" literally. I felt affection for her and many of the other characters, especially Walser, the journalist following her to the far reaches of the circus to write her story.
As the book neared the end, a type of wonderful absurdity manifests with each new encounter. Almost laughable, but plausible because I had become so subsumed by the ensuing plots.
Wonderful book!
glowbug's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Found it a struggle to get into this one. Loved section 1 but struggled through book 3
barhouma's review against another edition
4.0
Nights at the circus:
“Is she fact or she is fiction?”
—
“Would be the point of illusion if it looked like an illusion? [..] is not this whole world an illusion? And yet its fools everybody”
—
“‘Marriage? Pah!’ Snapped Lizzie in a pat. ‘Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different! D’you think a decent whore’d be proud to marry you, young man? Eh?’”
—
“Oh, my little one, i think you must be the pure child of the century that just now is waiting in the wings, the New Age in which no women will be bound to the ground.”
—
“Then I climbed up and stood where father time had stood and, like a man about to hang himself, I kicked away the chair so that I would not ne tempted to jump down upon it.
What a long way down the floor looked! It was only a few feet below, you understand, no great distance in itself- yet it yawned before me like a chasm, and indeed, you might say that this gulf now before me represented that grand abyss, the poignant divide, that would henceforth separate me from common humanity.
[..] so I spread. And closing my eyes, I precipitated myself forward, throwing myself entirely on the mercy of gravity.
[..] ‘I fell. Like Lucifer, i fell. Down, down, down.”
—
“I suffered the greatest conceivable terror of irreparable «difference» with which success in the attempt would mark me.
‘I feared a wound not of the body but the soul, sir, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind.’
‘I feared the proof of my own singularity.’”
—
“I only knew my body was the abode of limitless freedom.”
—
“Is there no justice in either earth or heaven? It would seem not. For this very same cruel.”
—
“‘Welcome, Azrael’ he says. ‘Azrael, Azrail, Ashriel, Azriel, Azaril, Gabriel; dark angel of many names. Welcome to me from your home in third heaven. See, I welcome you with roses no less paradoxically vernal than your presence, who, like Proserpine, comes from the Land of the Dead to herald new life!”
—
“We are doomed to stay down below, nailed on the endless cross of the humiliation of this world!“
—
“I cry: the sky is full of blood!”
—
“‘Yet’ he went on, am i this Buffo whom i have created? Or did i, when i made up my face to look like Buffo’s, create, ex nihilo, another self who is not me? And what am I without my Buffo’s face? Why, nobody at all. Take away my makeup and underneath is merely not-Buffo. An absence. A vacancy.”
—-
“Why, you might have said we constituted a microcosm of humanity, that we were an emblematic company, each signifying a different proposition in the great syllogism of life. The hazard of the journey reduced us to a little band of pilgrims abandoned in the wilderness upon whom the wilderness acted like a moral magnifying glass, exaggerating the blemishes of some and bringing out the finer points in those whom we thought had none. Those of us who learned the lessons of experience have ended their journeys already. Some who'll never learn are tumbling back to civilization as fast as they can as blissfully enlightened as they ever were. But as for you , Sophia, you seem to have adopted the motto to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
—
“‘I am’ she added sourly, ‘the slave of your freedom.’”
—
“Every little accident has taken you one step down the road away from singularity. You’re fading away, as if it was only always nothing but the discipline of the audience that kept you in trim.”
—
“She felt herself trapped forever in the revelation in Walser’s eyes. For one moment , just one moment, Favvers suffered the worst crisis of her life: ‘Am i fact? Or am I fiction? Am i what i know i am? Or am i what he thinks i am?’”
“Is she fact or she is fiction?”
—
“Would be the point of illusion if it looked like an illusion? [..] is not this whole world an illusion? And yet its fools everybody”
—
“‘Marriage? Pah!’ Snapped Lizzie in a pat. ‘Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different! D’you think a decent whore’d be proud to marry you, young man? Eh?’”
—
“Oh, my little one, i think you must be the pure child of the century that just now is waiting in the wings, the New Age in which no women will be bound to the ground.”
—
“Then I climbed up and stood where father time had stood and, like a man about to hang himself, I kicked away the chair so that I would not ne tempted to jump down upon it.
What a long way down the floor looked! It was only a few feet below, you understand, no great distance in itself- yet it yawned before me like a chasm, and indeed, you might say that this gulf now before me represented that grand abyss, the poignant divide, that would henceforth separate me from common humanity.
[..] so I spread. And closing my eyes, I precipitated myself forward, throwing myself entirely on the mercy of gravity.
[..] ‘I fell. Like Lucifer, i fell. Down, down, down.”
—
“I suffered the greatest conceivable terror of irreparable «difference» with which success in the attempt would mark me.
‘I feared a wound not of the body but the soul, sir, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind.’
‘I feared the proof of my own singularity.’”
—
“I only knew my body was the abode of limitless freedom.”
—
“Is there no justice in either earth or heaven? It would seem not. For this very same cruel.”
—
“‘Welcome, Azrael’ he says. ‘Azrael, Azrail, Ashriel, Azriel, Azaril, Gabriel; dark angel of many names. Welcome to me from your home in third heaven. See, I welcome you with roses no less paradoxically vernal than your presence, who, like Proserpine, comes from the Land of the Dead to herald new life!”
—
“We are doomed to stay down below, nailed on the endless cross of the humiliation of this world!“
—
“I cry: the sky is full of blood!”
—
“‘Yet’ he went on, am i this Buffo whom i have created? Or did i, when i made up my face to look like Buffo’s, create, ex nihilo, another self who is not me? And what am I without my Buffo’s face? Why, nobody at all. Take away my makeup and underneath is merely not-Buffo. An absence. A vacancy.”
—-
“Why, you might have said we constituted a microcosm of humanity, that we were an emblematic company, each signifying a different proposition in the great syllogism of life. The hazard of the journey reduced us to a little band of pilgrims abandoned in the wilderness upon whom the wilderness acted like a moral magnifying glass, exaggerating the blemishes of some and bringing out the finer points in those whom we thought had none. Those of us who learned the lessons of experience have ended their journeys already. Some who'll never learn are tumbling back to civilization as fast as they can as blissfully enlightened as they ever were. But as for you , Sophia, you seem to have adopted the motto to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
—
“‘I am’ she added sourly, ‘the slave of your freedom.’”
—
“Every little accident has taken you one step down the road away from singularity. You’re fading away, as if it was only always nothing but the discipline of the audience that kept you in trim.”
—
“She felt herself trapped forever in the revelation in Walser’s eyes. For one moment , just one moment, Favvers suffered the worst crisis of her life: ‘Am i fact? Or am I fiction? Am i what i know i am? Or am i what he thinks i am?’”
victoriasaurus's review against another edition
3.0
!?!?!?!?!?! Oh Angela Carter the woman that you are!