Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
1984
'She felt her outlines waver; she felt herself trapped forever in the reflection in Walser's eyes. For one moment, just one moment, Fevvers suffered the worst crisis of her life: 'Am I fact? Or am I fiction? Am I what I know I am? Or am I what he thinks I am?'
In Three Words: magical, feminist, vivid
As much as sometimes I was a bit lost in the world Carter creates (the boundary between fantasy and reality is pretty flimsy), I did enjoy this novel. Perhaps not as much as I hoped after completely adoring The Bloody Chamber, but I'm even more intrigued to discover what other characters and world Carter creates in other novels/short stories. Plus the questions this novel raises had me re-living my gender modules from uni which is always a good thing. It's deep, but it's a whirlwind of magic, excitement and the circus. One to re-read to truly take it all in, I think.
As much as sometimes I was a bit lost in the world Carter creates (the boundary between fantasy and reality is pretty flimsy), I did enjoy this novel. Perhaps not as much as I hoped after completely adoring The Bloody Chamber, but I'm even more intrigued to discover what other characters and world Carter creates in other novels/short stories. Plus the questions this novel raises had me re-living my gender modules from uni which is always a good thing. It's deep, but it's a whirlwind of magic, excitement and the circus. One to re-read to truly take it all in, I think.
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