Nights at the Circus

Angela Carter's work is facinating. They're the kind of books you can read over and over again, every time picking up extra layers and little bits you missed before. I wish I'd realised that earlier, because I used to have a copy of her Black Venus, but I've lost it somewhere in the last ten years, four cities and seven changes of address. I wish I still had it.

I do still have Nights at the Circus, another of her books I acquired about the same time. It's a clever, Baroque tale of sex, passion, and abnormality. As with Black Venus, the central character is a woman, a unique woman who goes through quite a few different personae. In this case, the heroine is Fevvers, a big rough cockney girl with pound signs in her eyes. She's an orphan, dumped in the door of a whorehouse in Victorian England. She's an abducted sex slave in a unique and perverse brothel. She's the loving auntie to a household of sweet little children, and their ice cream selling parents. She's the adopted daughter of a seditious feminist spy. She has wings.

Fevvers' wings might be genuine, or might be a big sham to fool the circus going public. Certainly Walser, an American journalist invited into her boudoir for an after-show interview, is intriqued enough to sign up for the circus himself to keep an eye on the world's only 'fully feathered intacta'.

Walser's new career as a clown is determined by an oracular pig, which makes perfect sense when you realise Angela Carter's universe runs along quite different rails from the one we inhabit.

It's a dream world, where it's quite possible for mirrors to absorb tigers and musical conservatories to exist deep in the Siberian wilderness. It's a world which runs on symbolic, rather than logical lines, a world in which animals often have greater humanity than humans, and the lines between human and animal blur.

As a pagan myself, I found the hints of witchcraft and supernatural powers fascinating. Carter argues that if you don't know the scientific explanation behind using peroxide to lighten hair, it'd look like magic. So why shouldn't apparently otherworldly powers like pausing time equally be explained by some mundane law of physics, albeit one you and I don't necessarily know.

It's a book which encourages the suspension of disbelief – don't expect any biological explanation of Fevvers' condition, or a plot which would stand up in court. Do expect a thrilling train ride through the heart of a surreal and wonderful wilderness.