Reviews

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

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ilseh's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

4.0

fionnualalirsdottir's review against another edition

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Reviewed in September 2012
There are many aspects of the bizarre world of this book that I admire even though it took me a while to get hooked by the story. I was ready to abandon it anytime during the first fifty pages until I came across a remark to the effect that for those who have never seen a match, striking one must seem like magic.
Then I understood something of what Carter was trying to do. She implies that since we don't know everything about the mysteries of the natural world, a lot of things are possibly possible. She sets out to examine some of these possibilities: a woman with wings, hatched from an egg; another who can stop time and conjure the weather with her handbag; chimpanzees that can read and write; a pig that can spell. These variations from the ‘normal’ serve to make Carter’s story more interesting and help her to make her points with a brilliant flourish.
She has no qualms either about borrowing phrases and images from the bible as well as from Shakespeare, Joyce, Yeats, Sendak and probably from many other sources that I failed to recognise. Basically, she disregards conventions and makes sure that her characters do likewise. And if the natural order must be upended, isn’t it fitting that it will be upended by women? So, all in all, reading Nights at the Circus turned out to be a satisfying and rewarding experience but I couldn’t help wondering if Lizzie’s famous handbag, with which she’d conjured many a mysterious feat, didn’t contain the iPhone 5....
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Edit: I wrote this back in 2012 when the 'magical' iPhone 5 was still a...mystery.

stiansi's review

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5.0

A phenomenal read. It's very rare that, upon closing a book, I feel the urge to immediately reread it. In fact, I can't quite recall the last time that happened - until this book. It's fantastic, fantastical, fun, hysterical, sad, depressing, dark, bright, and uplifting, and sometimes all those things at once. Carter writes, I think, just so damn well, with spellbinding elegance and control; it's utterly captivating. In turns beautiful, commanding, vulgar, and seductive, she paints vivid pictures of the nonsensical and the preposterous, and all you have to do is to let yourself be carried away - to join the circus, just like Walser himself. There are, besides the main story and focal point of the book (Fevvers), stories inside stories, too - rivalling the digressions of Pynchon - and a motley crew of characters (a fitting use of the clichéd term if there ever was one, to my mind) that are equally enchanting.

I can understand that this book might not be everyone's cup of tea, but for me, a sucker for this sort of magical realism, it was just amazing. Though I did not end up immediately starting a reread, what I did do was to order all of Carter's other books. On to those adventures; I'm excited.

aileenmarie's review

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adventurous funny inspiring medium-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

5.0

petermhoward's review against another edition

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3.75

loved lots of this, and the ending is great. but it drags on in a few places, with delightful but often tedious paragraph-long sentences, and the various jumps in POV can get annoying.

much of it seemed oddly colonialist too — lots told in the fashion of an anthropological adventure, and while it undermined that plenty, it was so inherent to the setting and the style it was difficult to overlook

some delightful story ideas though, about the dawning of the 20th century and of fame and celebrity and of the role/s of women, and all with enough magical realism to keep one’s curiosity