Book Review - 'Nights At The Circus' by Angela Carter

This is the first book by Angela Carter I’ve read that isn’t to do with fairy tales.

‘Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe’s capitals, part swan… or all fake?
Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney’s circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia.’

The book is divided into three sections, London, Petersburg and Siberia. The plot, such as it is, meanders along with various diversions and a light seasoning of magic.

In ‘London’, we’re introduced to our heroine, Sophie Fevvers – Fevvers being ‘feathers’ when said in the Cockney style – right at the start as she’s relating her life story to a young American journalist, Jack Walser. He’s determined to get to the bottom of the burning question – is Fevvers truly part swan or is it all an elaborate hoax? He may have already made up his mind for hers is the first in ‘a series of interviews tentatively entitled: ‘Great Humbugs of the World’.’

Our heroine isn’t a svelte swan-like character; she’s the refreshing opposite of the expected slim, ‘gorgeous’ woman. Angela Carter has given us a, literally, larger-than-life character whose voice ‘clanged like dustbin lids’.
‘… six feet two in stockings… though they said she was ‘divinely tall’, there was, off-stage, not much of the divine about her unless there were gin palaces in heaven where she might preside behind the bar. Her face, broad and oval as a meat dish, had been thrown on a common wheel out of coarse clay…’

And yet, ‘Everywhere she went, rivers parted for her, wars were threatened, suns eclipsed, showers of frogs and footwear were reported in the press and the King of Portugal gave her a skipping rope of egg-shaped pearls, which she banked.’ A practical woman is our Fevvers.

We also meet Lizzie, Fevvers’ constant companion and mother-figure.
‘Lizzie was a tiny, wizened, gnome-like apparition… snapping, black eyes, sallow skin, an incipient moustache on the upper lip and a close-cropped frizzle of tri-coloured hair…’

Her handbag appeared to be innocuous enough as are most women’s handbags. But it wasn’t long before I was dying to peer into Lizzie’s handbag. It seemed able to magically produce whatever remedy was required, regardless of the situation.

No one knows who Fevvers’ parents were as she’d been abandoned as a baby, left ‘on the steps… in the laundry basket… sleeping among a litter of broken eggshells…’ It was Lizzie who’d found her on the steps of the brothel where she worked. And so Fevvers was raised by the ‘kind women as if I was the common daughter of half-a-dozen mothers’.

In the first part, we’re basically told Fevvers’ life story up to the point she’s about to embark on the circus’ grand tour. But it’s not simple ‘telling’. We’re introduced to different characters, mainly the women who raise Fevvers and other women who may be bluntly labelled ‘freaks’. Yet, what rich stories they all have, given a slight shading of dark humour through Fevvers’ voice.

The settings are effortlessly and vividly described.
‘It was a gloomy pile in Kensington, in a square with a melancholy garden in the middle full of worn grass and leafless trees. The façade of her house was blackened by the London soot as if the very stucco were in mourning.’

‘… a mansion in the Gothic style, all ivied over, and, above the turrets, floated a fingernail moon with a star in its arms. Somewhere, a dog, howling.’

In the second part, we join the circus in Petersburg, but not in the same way as Jack Walser. He has, literally, joined the circus as a clown to continue adding to his initial interview. And, also because he’s fallen under Fevvers’ spell.

As much as I enjoyed the ‘London’ story, I thoroughly adored this part. We’re introduced to even more characters, the circus folk – the Professor and his Educated Apes; Mignon; the Princess of Abyssinia and her tigers; Colonel Kearney, (who reminds me of the KFC colonel!) and his wonderful pig, Sybil.

With all these characters, don’t think for a moment that we lose sight of our heroine. Each of their stories, each one different, flow and weave with Fevvers’ story, adding to it and we find ourselves in the midst of a rich, colourful tale.

Carter evokes the expected visuals of the circus with its magnificent colours and the dazzling costumes, the animal sounds and smells, but she also brings to light the tarnish under the gilt… ‘A smashed bottle, a rusting can…’

When we get to the third part, things take a wholly unexpected turn. Each chapter surprised me, and I had no idea what was going to happen. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced that in my reading. I was blown away by Carter’s imagination.

Yet again, more characters are introduced, and not all women. A shaman emerges from the wilderness. His outlook is almost poetically philosophical. Still very much a creature of ancient ways, I love the way he makes sense of ‘modernity’ through his primeval beliefs. He fast became a favourite of mine.

I found a certain magic in the way Carter used everyday words in unexpected ways, like this one, describing being on the cusp of a new century:
‘For we are at the fag-end, the smouldering cigar-butt, of a nineteenth century which is just about to be ground out in the ashtray of history.’

On the train, travelling the snow-covered land from St Petersburg to Siberia… ‘unimaginable and deserted vastness, where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half the continent…’
‘… progressing through the vastness of nothing to the extremities of nowhere…’

There are a lot of women in this book and each one of them is a strong character. Even those who come across as shallow or victim-like turn out to be wholly developed characters with more inner strength than they themselves realised.

Sexual scenes are described in an almost practical, no-nonsense manner.

The humour that runs through the book is, sometimes, unexpected and sometimes so dark, it seemed callous, almost, to laugh. And there are moments of anguish, skilfully conveyed in a couple of sentences, that take you by surprise.

This is a book I’ll happily return to. Although it isn’t a fairy tale in the traditional sense of the word, for me it might as well be with its deftly handled magical realism.