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Nights at the Circus

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 3,260 ratings · 249 reviews

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 desp...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published March 4th 1986 by Penguin Books (first published 1984)

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Sep 08, 2012 Fionnuala rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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. I understood then something of what Carter was trying to do. She implies that, since we don't know everything about the mysteries of the natural world, then a lot more things are possib...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Rob by: John

Shelves: 2009, cannibalism, all-time-favorites, wishlist

When I read Angela Carter, I imagine her as the literary grandmother to someone like Kelly Link. There's an eccentric tone of fantasy, an unabashed outlandishness and roguish word-play; there's a thread of challenge running through the narrative, sometimes cleverly concealed and sometimes out in front like so much gaudy embroidery. Carter is a master storyteller with a remarkable gift for language and a willingness to take risks on any front.

But all of the above I already knew from my introducti...more When I read Angela Carter, I imagine her as the literary grandmother to someone like Kelly Link. There's an eccentric tone of fantasy, an unabashed outlandishness and roguish word-play; there's a thread of challenge running through the narrative, sometimes cleverly concealed and sometimes out in front like so much gaudy embroidery. Carter is a master storyteller with a remarkable gift for language and a willingness to take risks on any front.

But all of the above I already knew from my introduction to Carter, her short story "The Loves of Lady Purple" (check it out in Wayward Girls and Wicked Women ).

Nights at the Circus goes beyond the expectations set by "The Loves of Lady Purple". It is more fantastic, more surreal, more political, more challenging, more graphic, and though more forceful also much more subtle. The traveling circus of Colonel Kearney provides such a splendid backdrop for Angela Carter's handiwork that I would not be at all surprised if this is her finest novel {†}. The notion of the circus opens up every possibility for her—literate monkeys taking over their own care and negotiating their own compensation, a fortune-telling pig, abject and sociopathic alcoholic clowns {††}... And most of that (despite providing its own commentary) seems on the surface to primarily help provide color to a narrative that focuses on a struggle to reconcile independence/individuality with the desire to mate and bond with others. Carter cleverly leads the reader along her characters' paths via totems and proxies, and accelerates us through their worlds in crisis when those totems become threatened and lost.

This is one novel that is as brilliant as it is lyrical.

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† = Again, as of this writing, I've only read this novel and one short story. Though I may perhaps be biased by the strength of the recommendation that J.M. made when suggesting the werk in the first place.

†† = Not to mention the thorough deconstruction of clowning.

---
See also:
• Graham Joyce's top 10 fairy fictions (less)

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Nov 18, 2007 lynne naranek rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2007

i don't get it! :(

I mean, the tale is fantastic, in all senses of the word. The premise of a winged amazon-like girl, brought up by a house of whores, who ends up an aerialiste in a circus, already requires a suspension of belief. The hapless Jack Walser, a journalist who interviews Fevvers (as in Feathers, you dig?) and falls in love with her, who then does everyone's childhood dream of running away to join the circus, goes through many trials and tribulations, heck, as does Fevvers and her fos...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Xdyj rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fa, o, coec, q, rtw, uk, sfhf_challenge, favorites

Though there are parts of this book I found (maybe deliberately) confusing, if you like to read about a fantastic traveling circus in the last days of the 19th century, an aerialist with wings (view spoiler), if you like magical realism, if you like discussions on topics like capitalism, rationalism, feminism or the meaning & implications of modernity, or if you just want a dazzlingly imaginative & v...more

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Nov 02, 2012 Liza rated it 5 of 5 stars

above excellent, on the high shelf for reference for when i get going with the next novel that i manage to finish , a just wonderful and alter imaginary into a world tHat SHOULD BE/could never be / and probably should never be either

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May 18, 2007 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had already added Carter's "Infernal Desire Machines..." but realized that I remember this one with greater pleasure - I have surely re-read it since the mid-late 80s at which I time I recall it coming from my now un-locatable friend Gretchen Elkins (I think this is her: http://www.amazon.com/Editors-Coolidg...) who was living in London at the time - the themes of circuses, magic and people with wings cause me to associate it with Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy and Wim Wenders' Wings of De...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Em rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical, magic-realism, favourites, 2013

Nights at the Circus is a very difficult book to write about, essentially, it is the story of a winged aerialist called "Fevvers" and an American journalist who interviews her.

Actually, it a lot more than just this - as we are drawn at tangents into the background of other characters and we move from the theatre, to the circus, a whore house, a freak show and more.

Transplanted from London to Russia then Siberia, there is much about this story which is totally fantastical and magical, there is...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Lezanne Clannachan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I stumbled on this book in my late teens, having never heard of Angela Carter but harbouring some vague notion that I loved writing and one day might attempt it myself.
Fevvers, a winged aerialiste, is the star act of a circus troupe in 1899. The book opens with her being interviewed by Walser, who is determined to expose her as a fake. Instead he falls in love and follows her to Russia and Japan as a clown. I, too, fell in love with Fevvers. Where a lesser writer might have been tempted to imbu...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Linda Lipko added it

Ladies and Gentlemen, folks of all ages, step right up to the most bizarre cast of circus characters you will ever have the pleasure to read.

Sophie Fevvers, billed as the worlds greatest, extraordinaire aerialiste, charms and woes all who travel in her path.

Soliciting the love of many, including the American journalist Jack Walser, spreading her wings to enfold as she defies human nature, she is unnatural in her behaviors and appearance.

Lacking all manner of decorum, with the heart of a prostitu...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had to read this novel in less than a week for one of my classes. The novel's quite complex and I will say that it was written for keen eyes.

It's a novel about a rebirth of a new kind of woman and man, and Carter does this in a way that's never been done before. The narrative, however, is dizzying with long sentences that seem to announce its content (like a circus). It's chaotically embellished, even more so with its varying and sometimes confusing change of perspectives.

It's a great novel an...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Ann rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a book were abnormal is the norm. A woman with wings hatched from an egg, stopping time, time passing faster in some places, a big that can see where things/people belong etc.
It is a story of boy meets girl and then various obstacles are on their path before they can finally end up together. But not in the classic sense, there are many hints of the bad things in the world. As well as there are so many other things going on in the story. There is a lot of lust, love, revenge and escaping....more

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Dec 10, 2012 Mel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century-fiction

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter Nights at the Circus was the bibliogoth book for October and on the whole it was met with some rather negative reviews, most people hadn’t finished it. On the whole I didn’t really like it all that much. I don’t really like books about circuses, there are only 2 exceptions Geek Love and the Caligari Carnival. I found the style did not appeal to me. It was a book where a lot was happening; I just didn’t care enough about the characters to make it worth it. It...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was delightfully surprised that I liked this gothic, magical realism type of novel where the principal protagonist is a tall, long-haired, round-faced woman WITH WINGS. Usually, plots like this, including those in science fiction, would be too heavy a task for me to appreciate because I have this little devil inside my ear who, as I read, continuously whispers to me not true, invented, can't ever happen, just pulling your leg, you're wasting your time, better read others, etc.

Add to these is t...more I was delightfully surprised that I liked this gothic, magical realism type of novel where the principal protagonist is a tall, long-haired, round-faced woman WITH WINGS. Usually, plots like this, including those in science fiction, would be too heavy a task for me to appreciate because I have this little devil inside my ear who, as I read, continuously whispers to me not true, invented, can't ever happen, just pulling your leg, you're wasting your time, better read others, etc.

Add to these is the fact that this novel has no heroes, only this winged 'aerialiste' and her coterie of equally memorable and heroic female characters. The men here are either just weak victims, freaks or ridiculous villains obviously doomed to fail.

Angela Carter, however, was a great writer. For only great writers could describe an improbable creature, a 6-foot-2 woman with wings, who can hover at short diatances, and make me believe, despite the whispering devil in my ears, that she's describing something she had actually seen and not merely conjured. Even this floating girl's name, "Fevvers," is a credible progeny of a seemingly actual event: unwanted baby left at the doorsteps, future foster mother sees it, saw it later sprouts some small feathery protuberances, feathers, fevvers.Then, of course, Carter's unbelievably fresh and unforgettable images, metaphors and similes. I recall having a brief intake of air when, describing a character, she writes something like that the character "is as sad as a continent" (or "has the sadness of a continent"?). Until then, I have never seen, or thought it possible, sadness being equated with a continent. Then I realized why not, indeed. A continent is huge and some sadness can feel like a giant smothering the life in you; or that a continent had existed, almost inert, for millions of years, forced to watch the comings and goings of centuries, seeing and remembering men and the great creatures of the world live, die and disappear forever.

There's humor (Fevvers giving a loud fart then mischievously turning her head to check the reaction of the journalist interviewing her), pathos (the unforgettable Mignon, poor girl, abused like the worst of all the downtrodden Dickens could conceive, with her box of chocolates) and rollicking adventure (they ended up in Siberia, of all places).

Very nice.(less)

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May 31, 2012 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars

BkC15) Carter, Angela, [NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS]: *swoon*

Yes indeed, I still agree with myself here. In these fill-in reviews of the over 100 books my RL (or F2F, whichever) book circle has read since 1994 that I have never written reviews for, I'm finding that some opinions have changed significantly. Not here. *SWOON*

Whatever I tell you about the plot, which is unremarkable (boy meets girl-oid, etc.), is utterly overshadowed by one fact of the book: Fevvers.

She is an aerialiste, the best in the...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Padraigj rated it 4 of 5 stars

If ever a novel deserved to be read again its this. Exuberant, theatrical prose that at many times dazzled you to the point it was a chore to read, and defied comprehension of content. Carter is the most cerebral fantasist I've ever read, and there's a reason she's very much a part of the canon of contemporary authors. This feminist, pro-sexual, extended metaphor masquerading as a novel is a celebration of women's sexuality, and also a few sheets shy of being a anti-capitalist critique. But its...more

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Dec 10, 2010 Katya rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Ok, I admit, at first, the book started a little too heavily for me. The first third is dedicated to Fevvers telling her life story to Walser, entertaining the press, as she put it, and of course it was constructed in a way that was supposed to entertain the obvious - full of long words, rampant exclamations. Much like Sophi, it was boisterous, emotional, overblown. But that style died as soon as it was time for Carter's economic, elegant narration.

Weird way to start a review? Here's why - autho...more

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Nov 26, 2010 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-noir, sf

Darkly fantastic, phrases of pure brilliance, mysterious and raunchy and beautiful by turns...I've never been much for circus tales, but the question of a woman with wings walking the line between human and bird? Oh yes. And she is glorious, beautiful, larger than life, greedy and bawdy and compassionate. In the hands of a man Fevvers would have been yet another man-eater, all devouring succubus, but this is told from the point of view of a woman. A hell of a woman. And it is not her that men su...more

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May 03, 2012 Katherine Yeh rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 12, 2012 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Angela Carter is one of those writers who have been on the periphery of my personal reading radar for a while. Feminist friends revere her work. She's one of the big literary names who deal in fairy tales. And she's been massively influential.

So, when the Cardiff Reads book club decided to pick a novel of hers as the next read, I decided to give it a go (and turn up to the book club for the first time).

Nights at the Circus is a novel about Fevvers - a cockney pronunciation of Feathers. She's a...more Angela Carter is one of those writers who have been on the periphery of my personal reading radar for a while. Feminist friends revere her work. She's one of the big literary names who deal in fairy tales. And she's been massively influential.

So, when the Cardiff Reads book club decided to pick a novel of hers as the next read, I decided to give it a go (and turn up to the book club for the first time).

Nights at the Circus is a novel about Fevvers - a cockney pronunciation of Feathers. She's a miraculous woman who has wings and can fly, and she's found a career as an acrobat. The book is divided into three parts. In part one, she tells her story to an American journalist, backstage in a London theatre, over the course of a night. The journalist wants nothing more than to prove her fake and burst the bubble of her fame. In part two, she starts on a world tour with a circus, and the journalist, seduced by the mystical attraction of circus life, follows along, signing up as clown and living incognito in the circus. Part three, ... well, I'm not going to spoil the story.

The novel is written in quite dense prose. It is not a quick read, and requires some concentration. The story moves in unexpected ways, and every aspect of the novel becomes more and more surreal and dream-like as it progresses. Starting with a relatively straightforward biographical narrative, the growing sense of unease is infused into the story gently: something odd is happening with the passage of time. There are unspoken things, sudden changes in the flow of conversation, meaningful glances get exchanged.

In part two, the surreal / fantastical elements become more and more prevalent. Animals are different. Clowns have their own mythos. Some magic appears to occur (beyond a winged, flying woman). And part three - well, all bets are off in part three, and we're deep into surreal, dream like, trance like crazy. Narrative voices change from first person to third person from one paragraph to the next (up to this point, all was in third person), among other twisted writing methods. Part three feels like a bit of an acid trip in the 1960s, in some ways. But the story still gets (largely) rounded off.

Underlying the novel are a rather large number of ideas, half-thoughts and notions about gender, women, men and feminism. Sometimes they are voiced by the author, in a carefully chosen phrase in descriptive text. At other times, characters openly discuss things. Sometimes, they are plot elements that are symbolic or metaphorical. Women, on the whole, fare best when they connect and interact with other women: even a whore house is utopian and idyllic, with no conflict between the whores, just as long as the men are not around. But as soon as men are involved, there is violence. Wife beaters, wife murderers, sinister religious oppressors, rapists... even our male protagonist at some point casually considers raping a vulnerable, almost unconscious woman, although it never goes beyond a hateful throwaway thought. Women without men (or children) flourish in this novel. Men (and children) bring suffering and complete loss of self.

No wonder Angela Carter's novels are dear to the heart of any English students tasked with writing essays about feminist literary theories.

As a novel, this book is sufficiently far outside of my general reading habits for me to struggle a bit. Densely written and surreal, at times experimental - not my usual fare at all. It has some beautiful passages and chapters and ideas. Fevvers is a memorable character, cheerfully low brow, sweaty, smelly and untidy, described in vivid detail and imprinting herself in my memory.

Yet as a story, the novel is not entirely satisfying. There are long passages where I was bored as a reader. At some point, the plot seemed to be well on the route to disaster, and yet, I could not find a turning point, a point of no return, when everything started to slide towards doom. Instead, the darkness creeps in invisibly. Perhaps a subtle achievement, but it left my internal story sense unsatisfied. Similarly, I could not quite work out the purpose or meaning of one character's magic. In short, by the time I finished reading, I felt only half satisfied with it.

Perhaps that, too, is an Angela Carter trademark. After all, doesn't the movie "The Company of Wolves" have one of the best middle sections in fairy tale movie history, framed by the least satisfying beginning and ending one could imagine? Nights at the Circus has brilliant sections set within the mythology of circuses, a brilliantly drawn central character, brilliantly drawn freak shows and whorehouses, and yet, the brilliant bits are like bubbles of greatness in a Swiss cheese of bafflement. (less)

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Dec 13, 2010 Staci Hart rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: didn-t-finish, just-don-t

Holy pretentious writing.

Seriously, by page 4 I'd had my fill of 5$ words. It gave me flashbacks to SAT prep 10 years ago. If you're looking for an easy read, this book is not it.

I was really disappointed - I was truly looking forward to reading this book but I don't think I have the brainpower to get through sifting through Angela Carter's obscure word jenga of a novel. It's like she constructed her sentences around how many uncommon words she could fit in. Also, the practice of choosing words...more

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Apr 04, 2010 Suna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: angela-carter

After the wondrous 'Bloody Chamber', I read this and was blown away.
It is simply one of the best magical-surrealist novels I've ever read.
You have to utterly suspend your disbelief about anything, because any rational, cynical 'nah' will just jar you out of the experience.

For me personally, the narrative makes a bit of a dive at the tail end of the Siberian adventure and a bit afterwards, but it is ultimately very rewarding to stick with it.
It is the kind of novel that stayed with me for ages af...more

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Oct 12, 2011 Jim Leckband rated it 4 of 5 stars

The overwhelming sense I got from finishing the book - which ends on the last New Year's Eve of the 19th century - is that the real Nights at the Circus are going to be the horrors and wonders of the 20th century. Carter alludes to the ways of the future while slyly hinting at modernization, the Holocaust, Siege of Stalingrad, Communism, the rise of the US as opposed to the UK. But all this is woven into the wacky narratives of the main characters - the winged Sophia Fevvers and the newspaper ha...more

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Feb 21, 2010 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am very glad I read this book and highly recommend it. It is the imaginative story of Sophia Fevvers a cockney orphan with wings. She was found abandoned by her parents and raised in a brothel. Accompanied by Lizzie, her Italian witch of a foster mother, she has become a circus performer -- an aerialist. She is the toast of European society in 1899, the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries.

In the first part of the book, a young American journalist, Jack Walser, interviews her in her...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-august-2012, kept

It's been a while since I've enjoyed a book this much. I was captivated from the very beginning, being sucked into the heroine Fevvers' world, backstory and charm. Carter is a master of crafting impeccable female characters, and indeed, this novel has the refreshing change of circling around a few very important female leads, with the male characters being neglected in the background. Fevvers is not the pinnacle of femininity, however, she does have a certain atmosphere to her that makes the rea...more

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Feb 20, 2011 Logophile rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, fiction, own

This is rollicking fun! I expected something somehow darker from Angela Carter, so it was a pleasant surprise that it was so lighthearted.

This is the story of Fevvers, a winged Cockney aerialiste, and Walser, a young American reporter who runs away to join the circus to satisfy his curiosity about her. There's a slew of colorful characters, from the sapient monkeys to the debauched clowns to the escaped murderesses and their guards who the circus encounters on its round-the-world tour as the 19t...more

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May 14, 2013 Casey (Myshkin) Buell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: magic-realism

Fevvers is the world's greatest aerialist. She stands 6'2" and has fully functional wings. Yes wings. She's loud, crass, and overtly sexual. She is everything a woman of her era is not. And that is the point. Journalist Jack Walser sits down to interview Fevvers in London, with the intention of proving her a fraud. But a strange thing happens; as Fevvers recounts her incredible life story Walser finds himself, like pretty much everyone else, falling in love with her. So he does the obvious thing...more

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Aug 29, 2007 Lin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone!

Shelves: owned

I loved this book! The setting (a circus around 1900) is awesome and feels nice and grimy, the story is fantastical and thrilling, the characters colourful and entertaining and there are plenty of moments to make you stop and reconsider reality. I love postmodern novels, and I loved this one. I can recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind a little surrealism from time to time!

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Sep 12, 2007 Jen is currently reading it

Shelves: gaveupon

I have a bad habit recently developed of reading too many books at once and not finishing most of them. On the other hand, what does it say about the book that I'm not compelled to finish it? While I thought the writing itself was interesting, I never really cared much about any of the characters, and there wasn't anything here that kept me reading for the 300 some pages.

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Dec 05, 2011 Louise rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, something-different

"And then the radiant shadow of the implausible cast it's transforming spell across the morning..."

LOVE LOVE LOVE

This book is vibrant, thrilling, and fantastical in every sense of the word. Carter's is creative and colourful writing, just how I like it. Provocative and sexy, magic and disturbing by turns, Fevver's inhabits a marvelously tangible world where the line between the real and the imaginary is ever so vague.

"The others are amazed at what has come to pass but all that Liz and I know is...more

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May 15, 2013 Katie Bliss rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I like circus books, usually. There's always an air of mystery and magic, as was true in spades in this novel about a Glamazon with wings, and the reporter who falls for her. However, the book took a lot of bizarre twists and turns and gave an in depth, dark, horrific background on basically everyone in the circus, yet I still failed to really care about anybody by the end. There was a lot of mistreatment of women; seems like every woman was strangely proportioned and had either prostituted hers...more

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About Angela Carter

From Wikipedia: Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.

She married twice, first in 1960 to...more From Wikipedia: Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.

She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, where she claims in Nothing Sacred (1982) that she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised." She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972). She was there at the same time as Roland Barthes, who published his experiences in Empire of Signs (1970).

She then explored the United States, Asia, and Europe, helped by her fluency in French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of East Anglia. In 1977 Carter married Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son.

As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman, collected in Shaking a Leg. She adapted a number of her short stories for radio and wrote two original radio dramas on Richard Dadd and Ronald Firbank. Two of her fictions have been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1987). She was actively involved in both film adaptations, her screenplays are published in the collected dramatic writings, The Curious Room, together with her radio scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Wolf's Orlando, an unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders (based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures) and other works. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003).

At the time of her death, Carter was embarking on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens. However, only a synopsis survives.

Her novel Nights at the Circus won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature.

Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer. Her obituary published in The Observer said, "She was the opposite of parochial. Nothing, for her, was outside the pale: she wanted to know about everything and everyone, and every place and every word. She relished life and language hugely, and reveled in the diverse."
(less)

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“The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.” — 59 people liked it

“Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!” — 32 people liked it

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