In November I read The Magic Toyshop, shockingly it was my first Angela Carter novel (I had read The Bloody Chamber stories several years earlier). It was a glorious reading experience and I was determined to read more, and soon. Since reading that, I added two more novels to my ever growing tbr as well as the new biography by Edmund Gordon (which looks utterly brilliant) and upgraded my film tie-in edition of The Magic Toyshop, to a beautiful vmc designer edition. In the comments on my review of The Magic Toyshop a couple of people recommended I read Wise Children next. I’m so glad they did, I loved it too.
Wise Children was Angela Carter’s final novel. It is a glorious, bawdy extravagant novel, hilariously irreverent with more than a nod to Shakespeare. In this comic celebration of a century of show business, Carter weaves a magical story around the tangled fortunes of two theatrical families; the Hazards and the Chances. Their connections to one another are wonderfully convoluted and unreliable, their relationships frequently improbable. It is a novel of pairs, there are several sets of twins, one twin of each pair, being more extravagant than the other. Much of the action takes place in London, a city divided by a river. This duality is one of the main themes of the novel.
The novel is narrated by Dora Chance, one of a pair of identical twins, she and her sister Nora were The Lucky Chances, born on the wrong side of the tracks – they have spent their whole lives in the theatre, song and dance girls, and their legs are still pretty good – for their age.
“Yes, indeed; I have my memories but I prefer to keep them to myself, thank you very much. Though there are some things I never can forget. The cock that used to crow, early in the morning, in Bond Street. And I saw a zebra once, he was galloping down Camden High street, his stripes fluoresced. I was in some garret with a free Norwegian. And the purple flowers that would pop up on the bomb-sites almost before the ruins stopped smoking, as if to say, life goes on, even if you don’t.”
The sisters are devoted to one another, though Nora always wanted a child, they take some comfort in their goddaughter Tiffany, who now appears on a trashy TV game show.
The novel opens in Brixton, South London, where Dora and Nora were born, and lived with their grandmother after their mother’s death. It is their seventy-fifth birthday – it is also Shakespeare’s birthday, and it is the birthday of their one-hundred-year-old father – a giant of the theatre himself – who has never publicly acknowledged his daughters. Melchior Hazard is their famous father (although paternity is never certain in this novel) whose first wife, Lady A – now called Wheelchair by Dora and her sister – live with the Chance sisters. A Shakespearean actor, Melchior often sports a gilded cardboard crown. Melchior is himself a twin – his brother Perry adored by his nieces and assumed by many to be their father – vanished abroad many years earlier. There are two other pairs of twins, and in true Shakespearen fashion, confusions over paternity and identity abound. Dora and Nora have been told they are the product of a brief encounter between their mother Pretty Kitty and Melchior Hazard. Their grandmother wastes no time in pointing out their absent father, on their seventh birthday, during their first visit to the theatre.
Neither sister ever marries, although they both come close. Nora is the one who falls in love all the time, even sharing her boyfriend with her sister on their seventeenth birthday, but at the end of the day, the sisters can’t be separated.
“Nora was always free with it and threw her heart away as if it were a used bus ticket. Either she was head over heels in love or else she was broken-hearted. She had it off first with the pantomime goose, when we were Mother Goose’s goslings that year in Newcastle upon Tyne. The goose was old enough to be her father and Grandma would have plucked him, stuck an apple up his bum and roasted him if she’d found out and so would the goose’s wife, who happened to be principle boy.”
On this, their seventy-fifth birthday an invitation arrives for Melchior’s birthday party later that day. It is the first of a number of surprises that day. In the hours before the party, Dora tells the story of their life, a life in the theatre, a life which takes them to Hollywood with their father to make a film based on A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Her stories of love affairs and theatrical characters are told from a distance of decades. Dora is a real character, a rambling old woman who says it just like it is, a lovable teller of tales, she’s not an entirely reliable narrator. The life she describes is one of bed hopping, theatricals, long lived relatives and the great joy that it is to sing and dance.
The novel ends where it starts on the day of Dora and Nora’s seventy-fifth birthday. They get ready for the party – plenty of makeup and star spangled stockings, and they and Wheelchair arrive at the party, to be greeted by the flash of paparazzi cameras – and where they find Melchior enthroned on a great chair, wearing a purple kaftan. Dora had known it would be an eventful day, and as the party progresses there are more surprises and revelations – not to mention one more inappropriate bunk up.
Wise Children was a big success with me, thank you those people who suggested I read it – you were quite right.
One of my favourite books, so cleverly plotted. Dora and Nora are such vibrant characters. Lovely review, Ali.
Oh yes the characters are wonderfully vibrant.
I love this book – so clever and such a wonderful entertainment!
Yes, I can really understand why people recommended it to me.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it – I loved it so much I can’t wait for my memory to get hazy enough for me to enjoy it all over again!
It is one I can imagine wanting to re-read it too.
Lovely review Ali! It’s too long since I read any Carter.
While I feel I have ignored her far too long.
This is one of a few I haven’t read but I always see it praised. I organized an Angela Carter Wek a few years ago and it was so wonderful to get back to her books after a ten year pause. Now I’m tempted to dig out one of those left on my piles.
Ooh good I hope you do.
Perhaps you might like to organise another Angela Carter reading week 😉
Fantastic! It’s wonderful to see Carter receiving her well deserved recognition, and once you start on her novels you’ll never turn back! The Magic Toyshop remains a favourite of mine, though I’ve never yet got around to Wise Children your review has encouraged me to filter it into my reading list. If you’re still interested in more Carter, I can heartily recommend Nights at the Circus (which I finished reading about 1/2 hour ago), Heroes and Villains and The Passion of New Eve. All excellent reads. Great review.
I recently bought Nights at the Circus, so that is likely to be my next Carter.
I have to be in the mood for Carter as I find her penchant for the fantastic a little too wild and OTT at times. That said, this does sound very good. It calls to mind another of her novels – Nights at the Circus – which you have in your TBR. I’ll be very interested to see how you find it compared to this one. The opening section of Nights is fantastic, hugely entertaining and evocative, but it loses its way a little towards the end. (Well, that’s just my view of it anyway!)
I do wonder how I’ll get on with Nights at the Circus because I know it is quite fantastic and I too can only take a certain amount of that.
We have had the same Angela Carter experience except I think I’ve read one other strange volume (perhaps her first?) where you’ve gone on to Wise Children. That’s one in which my marker got stuck near the beginning: thanks for reminding me to get back to it (as that’s one of my resolutions for this year, to move those stuck markers)!
I have no idea how I will get on with her other books, I think I was put off her years ago by the sound of some of the magical realism type elements in Angela Carter’s writing.
I do love this book and glad you had a good experience with it, too. I seem to be able to accept her magical realism while it is far from my favourite genre normally.
I am wary of magical realism generally – but so far I am coping with her world.
Tempted to a re-read!
I don’t blame you.
I love this book! Such a joyous combination of different genres, so full of references to other books, such fun to read. I’m sure you could read it over and over and find new details each time.
Oh yes, I can imagine getting more and more from it with subsequent readings.
[…] end of last year, I read The Magic Toyshop, it made me determined to read more by Angela Carter. Wise Children was recommended to me by several people, and I absolutely loved it. An extravagant, bawdy […]