Night at the Circus, by Angela Carter

Wild and wooly, this book! We start in a cramped little dressing room at the Alhambra Music Hall in London, in 1899–a handsome world traveling American reporter is interviewing Sophie, the famous Winged Aerialiste, who has astonished the admiring world with her AMAZING act. It is amazing, in that she actually has WINGS. And she is a rather charming young woman, Cockney to the core, with a huge mound of (dyed) yellow hair and a magnificent–even Rubenesque–figure. The reporter is there to scoff, but as time goes by–and as the bottles of champagne are emptied–he begins to lose track of his resolve. If she hatched from an egg, as she claims–does she have a belly button? We never learn the answer to this interesting question, but learn so many other things. It is a large and genial story, filled to the brim with fascinating characters–MANY MANY fascinating characters, a group of learned apes, the lady tiger tamer, the sullen frantic clowns–and an itinerary that spans Europe and Russia. Colonel Kearney takes the circus on a Grand Imperial Tour–his vision, to beat out Hannibal by taking elephants over the Urals! Which he almost succeeds in doing. It is, as I said, a wild and wooly book.

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