Angela Carter: "Wise Children"

Recently Joan and I went to hear a lecture about Angela Carter, an English novelist I admit I had never heard of, probably because she was writing at a time when I was in the United States. The following brief bio. quoted below is from Wikipedia. We both went straight to the library after the lecture, and Joan got 'Nights at the Circus' but did not hang in there until the end. The magical realism of the novel was that the heroine, a trapeze artist, actually had a pair of wings.

"Angela Olive Carter-Pearce (née Stalker; 7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992) who published as Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".^[1] In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize."

I read a different novel by Carter--"Wise Children"--and I found it endlessly entertaining, tracking the lives of Nora and Dora, two illegitimate twins of a great Shakespearean actor who would not acknowledge that he was their father. The tale is narrated by Dora, or was it Nora?, when the two sister are in their 'seventies and looking back at their lives. The novel follows their careers as dancers and film actresses, woven in with their relationship with the family of the Shakespearean actor and his wives and their film-making in Hollywood. There is much that I suppose one would describe (like Wikipedia) as picaresque: the brother of the great Shakespearean actor, who is always affectionate with the twins, is something of a conjuror, but the tricks he performs go well beyond the possible. And his sexual performance at age 100 seems unlikely...

This is from a glowing review, with which I agree:

"Angela Carter's last novel, Wise Children, is arguably her finest. It's certainly her most ebullient, cheerfully orgiastic and comic. It's quite simply a blast - of energy, laughter, art, love, entertainment, history, voice and hope."

I agree.