A review by bookishwendy
Wise Children by Angela Carter

3.0

I suspected that this book would contain more magical realism than I usually prefer, and I was right. It reminded me of [b:The Passion|15047|The Passion|Jeanette Winterson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388187737s/15047.jpg|864738] by [a:Jeanette Winterson|9399|Jeanette Winterson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1406177070p2/9399.jpg] (published just four years earlier) for its eccentric cast cavorting in endless circles through life's bawdy carnival, chock full of memorable imagery and lovely prose. In the end, it provoked in me a scrap of emotional resonance, a similar melancholy I might feel for the drooping elephants and faded acrobats in a seedy circus act. Juxtaposing topless dance numbers and overacted Shakespeare sounds fun in theory, but this book is such a cluttered mess (intentionally, symbolically so) of non-chronological vignettes and tangled family webs that I felt more annoyed than engaged until the suitably Shakespearean climax.