A review by mamimitanaka
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

3.0

No doubt a fun read, full of all sorts of the postmodern magical realist joys that are so capable of sating my literary cravings. I am once again left a bit emotionally cold by Carter's world, though it feels like no fault of her own and more my own biases... there's a constant tone to this book that seems to balance ironical whimsy with a highly conscious sincerity, with the former seemingly being informed by a parodical awareness of traditions from both English literature and magic realism. Sometimes the cheeky tone is a bit much for me, especially since it's pretty much in a single style throughout the book (the prose is nonetheless great, however). Plus the whole "demented carnival" aesthetic is something that I can only handle in small doses, hence it took me awhile to finish this. But while it made this difficult to pick up on a regular basis, there's a lot to love here; there's tons of great setpieces and the feminist undercurrent of the novel adds a lot of dimension; the amount of darkness and depravity in Carter's world would almost seem sadistic if it weren't so tenderly balanced with constant compassion and curiosity, which she's keen on employing towards every character, even the ones she more blatantly pokes fun at for their patriarchal flaws. And Fevvers and Walser are great joint protagonists and I never tired of following their strange adventures. Carter still remains a difficult author to grasp for me, but the act of reading her work is a joy even if I have trouble viscerally understanding some of the deeper ideas she's driving at.