Nights at the Circus
Angela Carter
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0140077030
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Sophi Fevvers—the toast of Europe's capitals, courted by the Prince of Wales, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec—is an aerialiste extraordinaire, star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover Fevvers's true identity: Is she part swan or all fake? Dazzled by his love for Fevvers, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser joins the circus on its tour. The journey takes him—and the reader—on an intoxicating trip through turn-of-the-century London, St. Petersburg, and Siberia—a tour so magical that only Angela Carter could have created it.
fugal music of the deep, he knew the Shaman could never believe all that; the Shaman lived so far inland he would have taken an oar, had he ever seen one, to be a winnowing fan. And he could not interpret this vision; he could not decide what the sea meant -- although, as his grasp of the Shaman's language grew, he was able to make a few stabs at interpreting the dream material as he went along. "I see a man carrying a" -- he fumbled for the word -- "a pig. You don't know what a pig is? A little
long cherished the plan and often whiled away the hours of toil, while some dirty bugger poked away at them with his incompetent instrument, by planning whether their pillowcases should be left plain or edged with lace and what wallpaper to put in the dining-rooms. Although the sudden termination of our contracts forced these resourceful girls to start out on their adventure with somewhat less capital than they could have wished, they forthwith consulted their bankbooks and vowed: nothing
sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. And, each day, takes less and less nourishment, as if grudging the least moment of wakefulness, for, from the movements under her eyelids, and the somnolent gestures of her hands and feet, it seems as if her dreams grow more urgent and intense, as if the life she leads in the closed world of dreams is now about to possess her utterly, as if her small, increasingly reluctant wakenings were an interruption of some more vital existence, so she is
She even poked out her tongue. Musicians, horns and fiddles dangling from their hands, the Colonel, Walser, watched, helpless, hearts in mouths, for an endless minute; the Charivaris, on edge, watched. Only in her own good time did she agitate her pendulum. She swung upon it, faster and faster, and, when she gained enough momentum, only then did she let go, and launched herself off, again, to arrive at the other side of the big top, where she landed upon her other trapeze, abruptly sat, briskly
place as she. That morning, she sat waiting at the grille for breakfast, one eye cocked on the revolving Countess, the other on the clock, and, when the minute hand hit the hour, the bell rang and the grille slid open with a metallic rasp, she slipped one lovely hand (for lovely hand it was) into the gap and clasped the hand in the leather glove that pushed in the tray from the other end. At the touch of Olga Alexandrovna's white fingers, the hand under the black glove quivered. Emboldened, Olga
