November 2021. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
1984, Picador, 295 pages. Written in English, read in English.
There is a short list of novels I’ve read, in which it appears that the author has positively, deliberately, decided to yield control of the narrative — to put a set of characters in an opening scenario and see where they will lead — and Angela Carter’s novel, Nights at the Circus, now joins this list. Little by little, it reveals itself as a member of the distinguished genre of magical realism, cleverly disguising its aims with an opening frame of Fevers, a famous British acrobat, being interviewed by an American journalist named Walser. She and her handler tumble into tales of her being discovered, inside what appears to be a nest, on the doorstep of a brothel, and discovering alongside with the brothel’s madame and inhabitants, one of which is her handler, that she in fact has wings, and can nominatively use them.
Once the readers join the journalist in discovering that not only is this not an embellishment or a fable, but the actual truth, and there are further truths concealed from him, he endeavours to literally join the circus in order to further accompany Fevers and uncover her story as a matter of investigative interest, sending periodical missives to his editor. Given that Walser disguises himself in the most obvious disguise a circus can offer, he slowly succumbs to the life of the circus and loses his footing as an investigative journalist. The novel takes us from London, where the initial interview is set, to St. Petersburg, Russia, and from there on an adventure through the Siberian tundra, each section goes further in losing its hold on any semblance of narrative order — to the point of switching the narrative voice constantly between first and third person without any clear boundary.
Along the way, we are introduced to a menagerie of accompanying characters — the quite American owner of the circus, constantly consulting with his companion, a sow named Sybille who, like her namesake, can tell the future and provide valuable advice; a strongman named Samson, in love with the former wife of one of the other circus employees, but content to oversee her affair with a female tiger tamer; a host of clowns led by a veteran who slowly loses his mind; a native clan, hidden from the modernity that threatens to overtake the world in the forests of Siberia; and a few groups of escaped convicts.
That all of this happens in 1899, at the dawn of a century that will hold many calamitous milestones of history, suggests that there are some analogies hidden inside the narrative. But those are not revealed — they are only hinted at, hiding in plain sight for the attentive reader embarking on a second trip through the novel.
When the time comes for that second trip, I hope to accompany the characters with memory sufficiently faded of my previous reading, allowing me to re-discover the novel and subconsciously pick up some of the hidden analogies, while I make my way, with the occupants of Angela Carter’s circus, to the other side of the tundra, the other side of the century.
The December 2021 selection of the David Bowie Book Club will be Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.
